Fully automated DNA lab-on-a-chip microfluidic system wins Dolomite’s “Productizing Science” competition.
Dolomite has today announced the winner of its 2013 Productizing Science competition as Molbot Pte.
The company submitted the concept of a low-cost bench-top molecular biology “Minilab” for automating molecular biology applications.
The “Productizing Science” competition is designed to find innovative microfluidic concepts and give the winner the chance to develop theirs into a commercially successful product.
Molbot’s molecular biology workstation Minilab will utilise microfluidic technology to take traditional sequential manipulations such as PCR assembly, thermal cycling, analysis and purification and perform them ’on chip’ in an automated way, Dolomite says.
The concept is to integrate traditional “stand-alone” systems such as imaging, PCR, centrifuge, electrophoresis and pipetting and combine them into a single, automated system.
According to Dolomite, the product will be the machine, which will be used with disposable labs-on-chips, different types of which will represent different applications and will be automatically identified by the machine.
Users will load the microfluidic chip and necessary reagents in the machine and the Minilab will execute the required functions for the task, meaning that user input is kept to an absolute minimum.
The automated nature of the Minilab minimises the need for user interaction, which Dolomite says will not only save time but also reduce the risk of failure.
