Accurate diagnosis of pathogenic infections requires early stage detection of these pathogens in blood and other body fluids. One of the most important requirements for early detection is the isolation of nucleic acids from these complex body fluids.

Blood and other body fluids are not always available in required large quantities (in mL) and the need of the hour is to effectively isolate nucleic acids from very low quantities of blood, while facilitating the detection of as little as 1 CFU/ml pathogens in it.

In order to miniaturize such a complex system, we used semi-automated microfluidic devices employing silica-coated nanoparticles for the selective isolation of DNA from blood, and achieved an isolation efficiency and purity comparable to commercially available DNA isolation kits.

This project was completed as part of the Applied Biosciences team at Siemens Technology and Services Pvt. Ltd. in Bangalore, India, and was presented at the 36th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society in 2014