A droplet microfluidic approach to single-stream nucleic acid isolation and mutation detection.

In this work, a droplet microfluidic platform for genetic mutation detection from crude biosample is described. Single-stream integration of nucleic acid isolation and amplification is realized on a simple fluidic cartridge. Subsequent DNA melting curve is employed with signal normalizing algorithm to differentiate heterozygous K-ras codon 12 c.25G>A mutant from the wildtype. This technique showcases an alternative to modular bench-top approaches for genetic mutation screening, which is of interest to decentralized diagnostic platforms.