Impact of microfluidic processing on bacterial ribonucleic acid expression.

Bacterial transcriptomics is widely used to investigate gene regulation, bacterial susceptibility to antibiotics, host-pathogen interactions, and pathogenesis. Transcriptomics is crucially dependent on suitable methods to isolate and detect bacterial RNA. Microfluidics offer ways of creating integrated point-of-care systems, analysing a sample from preparation, and RNA isolation to detection. A critical requirement for on-chip diagnostics to deliver on their promise is that mRNA expression is not altered via microfluidic sample processing. This article investigates the impact of the use of microfluidics upon RNA expression of bacteria isolated from blood, a key step towards proving the suitability of such systems for further development.