ABSTRACT
With the rapid growth of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), microfluidic/ nanofluidic technology has been developed rapidly with many applications. By combining the fields of nanofluidics and DNA bioarrays, the advantages of both fields can be exploited simultaneously. DNA bioarrays have dramatically accelerated many types of investigations including gene expression profiling, comparative genomic hybridization, protein–DNA interaction studies, single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) detection, as well as nucleic acid diagnostic applications. Due to the radial-only structure design, the applications of centrifugal pumping to 2-D nucleic acid bioarray analysis are limited. The nanofluidic bioarray method shows the advantages of less sample usage and fast reaction kinetics, as well as multiple sample capabilities for high-throughput analysis. The method was also developed in a double-spiral way to obtain a higher probe/sample density with self-correction benefits. Low-density probe line arrays created using the nanofluidic method have been used successfully for nucleic acid analysis.
