Applications to Nucleic Acids Analysis

DNA amplification (mostly by polymerase chain reaction, PCR) and other subsequent DNA analysis (including hybridization, sequencing, and genotyping) have been facilitated by the use of the microfluidic chip. These applications are then described in detail in subsequent sections. 

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Applications to Nucleic Acids Analysis 9.2.1.5 Flow-Through PCR... 

The versatility of agarose gels is obvious when one reviews their many applications in nucleic acid analysis. The rapid advances in our understanding of nucleic acid structure and function in recent years are due primarily to the development of agarose gel electrophoresis as an analytical tool. Two of the many applications of agarose gel electrophoresis will be described here. 

Thompson, A., Prescott, M., Chelebi, N., Smith, J., Brown, T., and Schmidt, G. (2007) Electrospray ionisation-cleavable tandem nucleic acid mass tag-peptide nucleic acid conjugates Synthesis and applications to quantitative genomic analysis using electrospray ionisation-MS/MS. Nucleic Acids Res. 35(4), e28. 

Electrophoresis is for separating ions, since only ions will migrate under the influence of an electric field, negative ions to the positive electrode and positive ions to the negative electrode. Scientists have found electrophoresis especially useful in biochemistry experiments in which charged amino acid molecules and other biomolecules need to be separated. Thus, application to protein and nucleic acid analysis has been popular (see Chapter 16). 

The book is divided into several chapters which include micromachining methods, microfluidic operations (microfluidic flow, sample introduction, sample preconcentration), chemical separations, detection technology, and various chemical and biochemical analysis (applications on cellular analysis, nucleic acid analysis, and protein analysis). Emphasis will be placed on analytical applications although the basic principles about micromachining and fluid flow and control will also be covered only to the extent that their understanding will assist the exploitation of the microfluidic technology on analytical applications. 

The topic of nucleic acid analysis by MALDI-TOF MS has recently been reviewed elsewhere (10,11). The reader can refer to those reviews for an exhaustive description of the evolution of mass spectrometry in nucleic acids analysis. This review will emphasize the new trends of using MALDI-TOF MS for specific applications in molecular biology and pharmacogenomics. 

These first applications of mass spectrometry to nucleic acid or polynucleotide analysis are, in effect, a qualitative verification of the presence of base units. However, these studies initiated a quantitation of the base abundances, using the intensities of BH fragments. The method gives data very... 

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