Microfluidics for the upstream pipeline of DNA sequencing – a worthy application?

Abstract

Technological advances and economic investment into DNA sequencing during this decade has provided the industry of genome sequencing with a suite of dedicated sequencing machines capable of rapidly generating vast quantities of sequence data. This next generation of equipment for DNA sequencing is freely available and is utilised more commonly; this has lead to the traditional bottle-neck in the sequencing pipeline transferring from the sequencing process, i.e. reading the bases on the older capillary based machines, to the upstream processes of sample preparation, i.e. creating the DNA libraries that are to be read. Essentially, advancement in sequencing technology is running faster than the equivalent for sample preparation technology and, without a remedy, we will no longer be able to provide samples quick enough to keep the sequencing machines running at full capacity.