Coupled flow and reaction during natural convection PCR |
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Authors: | Joshua W Allen Martin Kenward Kevin D Dorfman |
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Affiliation: | (1) Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Minnesota, 421 Washington Ave. SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA;(2) Present address: Department of Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139, USA |
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Abstract: | Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in a microfluidic Rayleigh–Benard convection cell represents a promising route towards portable
PCR for point-of-care uses. In the present contribution, the coupled fluid mechanics and heat transport processes are solved
numerically for a 2-D flow cell. The resultant velocity and temperature fields serve as the inputs to a convection-diffusion-reaction
model for the DNA amplification, wherein the reaction kinetics are modeled by Gaussian distributions around the conventional
bulk PCR reaction temperatures. These evolution equations are integrated to determine the exponential growth rate of the double-stranded
DNA concentration. The predicted doubling time is approximately 10–25 s, increasing with the Péclet number. This effect is
attributed to low velocity, slow kinetics “dead zones” located at the center of the reactor. The latter observation provides
an alternative rationalization for the use of loop-based natural convection PCR systems. |
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Keywords: | Polymerase chain reaction Natural convection Rayleigh– Benard cell DNA Modeling |
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