Hand-Powered Microfluidics for Parallel Droplet Digital Loop-Mediated Isothermal Amplification Assays

Droplet digital loop-mediated isothermal amplification (ddLAMP) is an important assay for pathogen detection due to its high accuracy, specificity, and ability to quantify nucleic acids. However, performing ddLAMP requires expensive instrumentation and the need for highly trained personnel with expertise in microfluidics. To make ddLAMP more accessible, a ddLAMP assay is developed, featuring significantly decreased operational difficulty and instrumentation requirements. The proposed assay consists of three simplified steps: (1) droplet generation step, in which a LAMP mixture can be emulsified just by manually pulling a syringe connected to a microfluidic device. In this step, for the first time, we verify that highly monodispersed droplets can be generated with unstable flow rates or pressures, allowing untrained personnel to operate the microfluidic device and perform ddLAMP assay; (2) heating step, in which the droplets are isothermally heated in a water bath, which can be found in most laboratories; and (3) result analysis step, in which the ddLAMP result can be determined using only a fluorescence microscopy and an open-source analyzing software. Throughout the process, no droplet microfluidic expertise or equipment is required. More importantly, the proposed system enables multiple samples to be processed simultaneously with a detection limit of 10 copies/μL. The test is simple and intuitive to operate in most laboratories for multi-sample detection, significantly enhancing the accessibility and detection throughput of the ddLAMP technique.