Influence of the Flow Velocity on the Hybridization Rate in Convection-driven DNA Microarray Analysis
 
Influence of the Flow Velocity on the Hybridization Rate in Convection-driven DNA Microarray Analysis 
 
Frederik Detobel, Kris Pappaert, Paul Van Hummelen, Cathleen De Tandt, Willy Ranson, Gert Desmet
 
Abstract 

DNA hybridization in micro-arrays is a strongly diffusion limited process, very often requiring overnight waiting before a sufficient amount of probe DNA molecules has had the time to diffuse towards the target spot carrying their matching counterpart. To speed up the analysis, it seems straightforward to organize some form of a convective transport across the surface of the microarray. In the past few years, several convection driven-systems have hence been developed and some of them have even been commercialized. These systems mainly differentiate themselves by the driving force that is used to generate the transport of the DNA sample, including pressure forces, acoustic waves, centrifugal forces and viscous drag forces