A comparison of Lyse-It to other cellular sample preparation, bacterial lysing, and DNA fragmentation technologies

Sample Preparation and Diagnostic Methods for a Variety of Settings: A Comprehensive Review

Sample preparation is an essential step for nearly every type of biochemical analysis in use today. Among the most important of these analyses is the diagnosis of diseases, since their treatment may rely greatly on time and, in the case of infectious diseases, containing their spread within a population to prevent outbreaks. To address this, many different methods have been developed for use in the wide variety of settings for which they are needed. In this work, we have reviewed the literature and report on a broad range of methods that have been developed in recent years and their applications to point-of-care (POC), high-throughput screening, and low-resource and traditional clinical settings for diagnosis, including some of those that were developed in response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. In addition to covering alternative approaches and improvements to traditional sample preparation techniques such as extractions and separations, techniques that have been developed with focuses on integration with smart devices, laboratory automation, and biosensors are also discussed.

Development of a Microplate Platform for High-Throughput Sample Preparation Based on Microwave Metasurfaces

Sample preparation is one of the most time-consuming steps in diagnostic assays, particularly those involving biological samples. In this paper we report the results of finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations and thermographic imaging experiments carried out with the intent of designing a microplate for rapid, high-throughput sample preparation to aid diagnostic assays. This work is based on devices known as microwave lysing triangles (MLTs) that have been proven capable of rapid sample preparation when irradiated in a standard microwave cavity. FDTD software was used to model a microplate platform as a polystyrene substrate with an array of various passive scattering elements (PSEs) of different sizes, shapes, and interelement spacings in a 2.45 GHz field identical to that of a common microwave oven. Based on the FDTD modeling, several PSE arrays were fabricated by cutting PSEs out of aluminum foil and adhering them to the bottom of regular polystyrene microplates to make prototypes. Each prototype microplate was then irradiated in a microwave cavity for a range of different times, powers, and source angles and the heating effects were observed via a forward looking infrared (FLIR) camera. Based on the results, two prototype microplate platforms have been shown to demonstrate electromagnetic and thermal enhancements similar to those seen with MLTs as well as tunable thermal responses to radio frequency (RF) irradiation.

Effects of Lyse-It on endonuclease fragmentation, function and activity

Nucleases are enzymes that can degrade genomic DNA and RNA that decrease the accuracy of quantitative measures of those nucleic acids. Here, we study conventional heating, standard microwave irradiation, and Lyse-It, a microwave-based lysing technology, for the potential to fragment and inactivate DNA and RNA endonucleases. Lyse-It employs the use of highly focused microwave irradiation to the sample ultimately fragmenting and inactivating RNase A, RNase B, and DNase I. Nuclease size and fragmentation were determined visually and quantitatively by SDS polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and the mini-gel Agilent 2100 Bioanalyzer system, with a weighted size calculated to depict the wide range of nuclease fragmentation. Enzyme activity assays were conducted, and the rates were calculated to determine the effect of various lysing conditions on each of the nucleases. The results shown in this paper clearly demonstrate that Lyse-It is a rapid and highly efficient way to degrade and inactivate nucleases so that nucleic acids can be retained for down-stream detection.