Sophia Probst

Ms. Sophia Probst

TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITÄT DRESDEN

Research Focus & Metrics

Academic Career Length

7Years (2020-Present)

(Calculated once Scilit publication data is synced: current year − year of first publication + 1)

Representative Publications

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21 April 2020 in Molecules
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
PDF file
MSMartin Schulz
Martin Schulz
SPSophia Probst
Sophia Probst
SCSilvia Calabrese
Silvia Calabrese
AHAna R. Homann
Ana R. Homann
NBNadine Borst
Nadine Borst
NPNils Paust
Nils Paust
We present a versatile tool for the generation of monodisperse water-in-fluorinated-oil droplets in standard reaction tubes by centrifugal step emulsification. The microfluidic cartridge is designed as an insert into a standard 2 mL reaction tube and can be processed in standard laboratory centrifuges. It allows for droplet generation and subsequent transfer for any downstream analysis or further use, does not need any specialized device, and manufacturing is simple because it consists of two parts only: A structured substrate and a sealing foil. The design of the structured substrate is compatible to injection molding to allow manufacturing at large scale. Droplets are generated in fluorinated oil and collected in the reaction tube for subsequent analysis. For sample sizes up to 100 µL with a viscosity range of 1 mPa·s–4 mPa·s, we demonstrate stable droplet generation and transfer of more than 6 × 105 monodisperse droplets (droplet diameter 66 µm ± 3 µm, CV ≤ 4%) in less than 10 min. With two application examples, a digital droplet polymerase chain reaction (ddPCR) and digital droplet loop mediated isothermal amplification (ddLAMP), we demonstrate the compatibility of the droplet production for two main amplification techniques. Both applications show a high degree of linearity (ddPCR: R2 ≥ 0.994; ddLAMP: R2 ≥ 0.998), which demonstrates that the cartridge and the droplet generation method do not compromise assay performance.