A low-cost, portable, and practical LAMP device for point-of-diagnosis
in the field
Abstract
Transition of rapid, ready-to-use, and low-cost nucleic acid-based
detection technologies from laboratories to points of sample collection
has drastically accelerated. However, most of these approaches are still
incapable of diagnosis starting from sampling, through nucleic acid
isolation and detection in the field. Here, we developed a simple,
portable, low-cost, colorimetric, and remotely controllable platform for
reliable, high-throughput, and rapid diagnosis using loop mediated
isothermal amplification (LAMP) assays. It consists of a thermally
isolated cup, low-cost electronic components, a polydimethylsiloxane
sample well, and a fast prototyped case that covers electronic
components. The steady-state temperature error of the system is less
than 1%. We performed LAMP, Colony-LAMP, and Colony PCR reactions using
the yaiO2 primer set for Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa
samples at 65˚C and 30 min. We detected the end-point colorimetric
readouts by the naked eye under day light. We confirmed the specificity
and sensitivity of our approach using pure genomic DNA and crude
bacterial colonies. We benchmarked our Colony-LAMP detection against
Colony PCR. The number of samples tested can easily be modified for
higher throughput in our system. We strongly believe that our platform
can greatly contribute rapid and reliable diagnosis in versatile
operational environments.