Monte Carlo Modeling-Based Digital Loop-Mediated Isothermal Amplification on a Spiral Chip for Absolute Quantification of Nucleic Acids

Digital loop-mediated isothermal amplification (dLAMP) is an attractive approach for absolute quantification of nucleic acids with high sensitivity and selectivity. Theoretical and numerical analysis of dLAMP provides necessary guidance for the design and analysis of dLAMP devices. In this work, a mathematical model was proposed on the basis of the Monte Carlo method and the theories of Poisson statistics and chemometrics. To examine the established model, we fabricated a spiral chip with 1200 uniform and discrete reaction chambers (9.6 nL) for absolute quantification of pathogenic DNA samples by dLAMP. Under the optimized conditions, dLAMP analysis on the spiral chip realized quantification of nucleic acids spanning over 4 orders of magnitude in concentration with sensitivity as low as 8.7 x 10(-2) copies/mu L in 40 min. The experimental results were consistent with the proposed mathematical model, which could provide useful guideline for future development of dLAMP devices.