Microfluidic system to detect select DNA fragments using agglutination process

This thesis investigates the design, fabrication, and testing of an easy-to-use, disposable and portable microfluidic system for DNA amplification detection; this is suitable for point-of-care testing (POCT) applications. The microfluidic system utilizes biotin-labelled DNA to agglutinate streptavidin-coated microspheres. The microfluidic system is designed to retain aggregates of cross-linked microspheres as opposed to single microspheres, indicating the detection of biotin-labelled DNA. The microfluidic platform is composed of a filter design and inlet/outlet reservoirs, which was fabricated using microfabrication techniques. This research demonstrates that the microfluidic system is an improvement on the current DNA detection technique utilizing particle agglutination. Such a system may in turn form the basis of future hand-held, compact, point-of-care biosensors for disease screening and identification.