Department of
Chemistry & Biochemistry
School of Integrated Science and Humanities
Departmental Seminar Announcement
Rapid PCR Thermocycling
Dr. Hendrik J. Viljoen
Distinguished Professor and Chair
Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
The design of a rapid thermocycler brings engineering and biochemistry together. In this talk I
describe how we designed a cycler that could perform 30 cycles in less than 3 minutes. At these
cycling rates the polymerase chain reaction became the rate limiting step. Thus we developed
kinetic models of PCR to study fidelity, processing rates and thermal damage. Rapid PCR
requires that the temperature control of the cycler must be extremely precise. I will discuss how
we integrated high precision thermal management into the instrument and show applications for
high GC templates. Another challenge is to combine rapid PCR with relatively large sample
volumes – this led to the design of a novel cuvette. In the second part of the talk I will first discuss
some clinical applications and then focus on a specific application – the rapid detection of
tuberculosis. Sputum samples are notoriously difficult to process, due to the patient-to-patient
variability, the presence of inhibitors and the paucity of bacilli, particularly in patients who are coinfected with HIV. I will briefly describe how we determined the key parameters of cell wall lysis
and then used that information to develop a miniature lysis module. Clinical results will be
presented and compared to the gold standard of culture as well as other nucleic acid amplification
tests. In the final part of my talk I will briefly share some of our latest efforts on paediatric
tuberculosis.
Date:
Friday, April 3, 2015
Time:
11:00 am to 12:00 pm
Location: Parking Garage 5, PG5-155 – MMC (Live)
Marine Sciences Building Room 105 (MSB-105) – BBC (via Polycom)
Phone: 305-348-2605
Fax: 305-348-6700
E-mail: [email protected]
http://chemistry.fiu.edu