Developing rapid DNA analysis technology
Thursday, September 29, 2016 - 11:01
in Biology & Nature
Jim Schneider, professor of chemical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, recently received a 3-year, $295,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop new strategies to rapidly separate and analyze long (kilobase) DNA strands, using surfactants rather than polymeric gels. These faster analysis techniques can impact a wide range of genomic DNA analyses, such as genome mapping, where rapid processing of kilobase-length DNA is required. While conventional pulsed-field electrophoresis methods take days to separate kilobase-length DNA, Schneider's new methods will take less than five minutes and use inexpensive, reusable materials.