Miniaturized System with a Facile Isothermal Amplification Microfluidic Chip for Rapid Detection of Zika Viruses

A real-time fluorescence detection biomedical miniaturized system with a disposable microfluidic chip was developed for loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) reactions. The miniaturized system was developed consisting of a mini heating plate, a temperature sensor, a temperature controller and an adjustable mechanical stage. Based on experimental result, the temperature of the heating plate is evenly distributed, and the error of the temperature is less than 1.3%. The microfluidic chip was designed and fabricated by MEMS technology and thin-casting method. The volume of the LAMP reaction was changed from 25 mu L to 2 mu L. The volume of the LAMP reaction was optimized. The nucleic acid of Zika viruses was amplified and detected in real-time mode with our miniatureized system by using above microfluidic chip. From the experiment results, the detection range was from 100 copies to 10(6) copies. This biomedical system has the potential for point-of-care diagnostics (POCT) with the many advantages, such as not high cost, short analysis and detection time, not much reagent and sample consumption and so on.