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The University of Southampton
Biological Sciences

Microfluidic isothermal nucleic acid amplification Seminar

Time:
13:00 - 14:00
Date:
11 February 2014
Venue:
Building 7 Room 3027

For more information regarding this seminar, please telephone Kim Lipscombe on 02380 597747 or email K.R.Lipscombe@soton.ac.uk .

Event details

Maria-Nefeli Tsaloglou received her BSc Double Honours in Biochemistry and Chemistry at the University of Southampton and was awarded the Alan Carrington Prize for her project on liquid crystals for display applications with Prof. Geoffrey Luckhurst. In June 2008, she completed her PhD on lipid regulation of enzyme function with Prof. George Attard at the University of Southampton. She has since worked at governmental (National Oceanography Centre) and academic (Institute for Life Sciences & Electronics and Computer Science, Southampton) labs developing microfluidic sensors for biological environmental monitoring.

Biological environmental monitoring is a multi-disciplinary field which combines bio-analytical sciences, microfluidics, as well as system integration and automation. Field applications include: point-of-care diagnosis of nosocomial infections to prevent wider spread; genotyping of microbial infections in blood to identify antibiotic resistance; and water monitoring of waterborne pathogens. However, an integrated system for clinical or environmental samples must achieve a series of complex functions. Microfluidic microsystems can address these needs as well as offer portability, reduced reagent consumption and waste production, autonomy and preserved reagent storage on-device. As a molecular tool for detection and speciation, isothermal nucleic acid amplification technologies are promising candidates for miniaturisation. They operate at lower temperatures than conventional PCR reactions and do not require thermal cycling. Two examples are nucleic acid sequence-based amplification and recombinase polymerase amplification. This talk will review isothermal miniaturised platforms that use traditional microfluidics, digitised fluid manipulation and three-dimensional microfluidic paper analytical devices.

Speaker information

Dr Nefeli Tsaloglou

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