Development of an accessible 2-dimensional micro capillary electrophoresis device for immunological studies.

摘要

This dissertation describes the development of a 2-dimensional (2D) microelectrophoresis device for immunological studies, specifically looking at DNA obtained from T-cells receptors. Traditionally DNA from this source is analyzed using two electrophoretic methods known as spectratyping and single strand conformational polymorphism (SSCP). These two methods separate DNA based on size and nucleotide sequence respectively. While these techniques are widely used, they are labor intensive and time consuming to perform. The 2D micro capillary electrophoresis device presented here combines these two techniques onto a single chip for faster and easier analysis. Standard processing of DNA in this manner takes several hours or and up to a day to complete. The device presented here reduces the analysis time to 32 minutes making it an attractive alternative to traditional methods. The device is designed to be used with equipment currently found in life science labs (i.e. pipettes, electrophoretic power supplies, fluorescent microscopes), to make it accessible to researchers. In addition it is constructed using an inexpensive rapid fabrication technology known has liquid phase photopolymerization that requires no cleanroom facilities or other high cos machinery to construct the device.