When Dr. Victor Ugaz talks about "catch-and-release," he means
DNA, not fish. DNA is known to most of us these days through
crime shows, but crime scene investigators and police detectives
aren't the only ones who use DNA analysis. DNA identification is
also used to diagnose diseases or detect biological agents and
toxins. Ugaz, an assistant professor in the Artie McFerrin
Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University, is
working to miniaturize a sprawling DNA lab so that components
needed for DNA analysis are available in a tiny lab-on-a-chip
about the size of a business card. He's already worked out a
novel scheme to perform the series of reactions that allow
scientists to rapidly copy the often trace amounts of DNA for
analysis. Now, in a paper in the March 28 issue of the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Vol. 103 No.
13, 4825-4830), Ugaz and Ph.D. student Faisal A. Shaikh have
retreated a step: isolating and concentrating small amounts of
DNA that would otherwise be difficult