Rapid automatic nucleic acid purification system based on gas–liquid immiscible phase

Abstract

The continuous expansion of nucleic acid detection applications has resulted in constant developments in rapid, low‐consumption, and highly automated nucleic acid extraction methods. Nucleic acid extraction using magnetic beads across an immiscible phase interface offers significant simplification and parallelization potential. The gas–liquid immiscible phase valve eliminates the requirement for complicated cassettes and is suitable for automation applications. By analyzing the process of magnetic beads crossing the gas‐liquid interface, we utilized a low magnetic field strength to drive large magnetic bead packages to cross the gas‐liquid interface, providing a solution of high magnetic bead recovery rate for solid‐phase extraction with a low‐surfactant system based on gas‐liquid immiscible phase valve. The recovery rate of magnetic beads was further improved to 90%–95% and the carryover of the reagents was below 1%. Consequently, a chip and an automatic system were developed to verify the applicability of this method for nucleic acid extraction. The Hepatitis B virus serum standard was used for the extraction test. The extraction of four samples was performed within 7 minutes, with nucleic acid recovery maintained above 80% and good purity. Thus, through analysis and experiments, a fast, highly automated, and low‐consumption nucleic acid recovery method was proposed in this study.