Department of Energy and Refrigerating Air-Conditioning Engineering, National Taipei University of Technology, No. 1, Sec. 3, Chung Hsiao E. Rd., Taipei 106, Taiwan, ROC.
Biosens Bioelectron. 2010 Mar 15;25(7):1820-4. doi: 10.1016/j.bios.2009.11.021. Epub 2009 Nov 27.
Development of Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technology has recently allowed the migration of real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) machines to lab-on-a-chip systems. The miniaturization of biological instruments has been studied extensively, with several prototypes constructed and tested. In this study, the lab-on-a-chip system is evaluated; its DNA quantification is estimated by theorems, and the specifications of proposed chip prototypes are compared with the original machines. The analysis results suggest five hypotheses. Using experiments and the data collected from published papers, these hypotheses were either verified or rejected, and the advantages and shortcomings of real-time PCR chips were identified. The proven advantages of the lab-on-a-chip system are its compact size, low sample volume to nano-liter, and short analysis time-less than 10s to complete one PCR cycle and 370 s for completing the whole quantification process. However, the detection limits, quantification uncertainties, and melting analysis ability of the chip prototypes are at best comparable to, and perhaps worse than, those of commercial instruments. Real-time PCR chips are not perfectly accurate diagnostic tools for a laboratory but they have advantages over traditional techniques for point-of-care testing.
微机电系统（MEMS）技术的发展最近使得实时聚合酶链反应（PCR）仪器能够迁移到芯片实验室系统中。生物仪器的小型化已经得到了广泛的研究，已经构建和测试了几个原型。在本研究中，对芯片实验室系统进行了评估；通过定理来估计其 DNA 定量，并将提出的芯片原型的规范与原始机器进行了比较。分析结果提出了五个假设。使用实验和从已发表的论文中收集的数据，对这些假设进行了验证或否定，并确定了实时 PCR 芯片的优缺点。芯片实验室系统的优势在于其体积小、样品体积小至纳升、分析时间短——完成一个 PCR 循环不到 10 秒，整个定量过程需要 370 秒。然而，芯片原型的检测限、定量不确定度和熔解分析能力至多与商业仪器相当，甚至可能更差。实时 PCR 芯片不是实验室中完美的诊断工具，但它们在即时护理测试方面优于传统技术。
