Apparatus and method for the generation, separation, detection, and recognition of biopolymer fragments
First Claim
1. An electrophoretic module for holding an electrophoretic medium, said electrophoretic module comprising:
- (a) a bottom plate;
(b) a top plate comprising loading ports that are holes with a diameter between 0.5 and 2.0 mm; and
, (c) an adhesive deposited between the top and bottom plates to form channels in which the electrophoretic medium resides, the channels have a width approximately 0.25 mm less than the diameter of the holes, such that the holes are in register with the channels, and the adhesive bonds the top plate to the bottom plate.
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Abstract
This invention is an integrated instrument for the high-capacity electrophoretic analysis of biopolymer samples. It comprises a specialized high-voltage, electrophoretic module in which the migration lanes are formed between a bottom plate and a plurality of etched grooves in a top plate, the module permitting concurrent separation of 80 or more separate samples. In thermal contact with the bottom plate is a thermal control module incorporating a plurality of Peltier heat transfer devices for the control of temperature and gradients in the electrophoretic medium. Fragments are detected by a transmission imaging spectrograph which simultaneously spatially focuses and spectrally resolves the detection region of all the migration lanes. The spectrograph comprises a transmission dispersion element and a CCD array to detect signals. Signal analysis comprises the steps of noise filtering, comparison in a configuration space with signal prototypes, and selection of the best prototype. Optionally post-processing is done by a Monte-Carlo simulated annealing algorithm to improve results. Optionally, an array of micro-reactors can be integrated into the instrument for the generation of sequencing reaction fragments directly from crude DNA samples.
125 Citations
13 Claims
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1. An electrophoretic module for holding an electrophoretic medium, said electrophoretic module comprising:
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(a) a bottom plate;
(b) a top plate comprising loading ports that are holes with a diameter between 0.5 and 2.0 mm; and
,(c) an adhesive deposited between the top and bottom plates to form channels in which the electrophoretic medium resides, the channels have a width approximately 0.25 mm less than the diameter of the holes, such that the holes are in register with the channels, and the adhesive bonds the top plate to the bottom plate. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4)
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5. An electrophoretic module for holding an electrophoretic medium, said electrophoretic module comprising:
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(a) a top plate having a plurality of loading ports that are holes with a diameter between 0.5 and 2.0 mm disposed above a plurality of migration lanes, each migration lane being in liquid contact with one loading port and each lane having a width approximately 0.25 mm less than the diameter of the holes; and
,(b) a bottom plate bonded to the top plate. - View Dependent Claims (6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13)
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Specification