Organic/aqueous Two Phase Microflow for Biological Sample Preparation

Organic-aqueous liquid (phenol) extraction is one of many standard techniques to efficiently purify DNA directly from cells. With effective mixing, the cell components naturally distribute themselves into the two fluid phases in order to minimize interaction energies of the biological components with the surrounding solvents. The membrane and protein partition into the organic phase while the DNA stays in the aqueous phase. This work presents two phase microflows for use to effectively extract DNA from cells. Electrohydrodynamic instability is used to mix the two phases in order to increase the surface area over which biological component partitioning may occur.