The MLVA band profiles may be resolved by different techniques ranging from low cost manual agarose gels to the more expensive capillary electrophoresis sequencing systems. The most frequently used method is the agarose gel. Recently, a more rapid and inexpensive method based on the

Lab on a chip technology has been Ipatasertib supplier proposed [31]. This miniaturized platform for electrophoresis applications is able to size and quantify PCR fragments, and was previously used for studying the genetic variability of Brucella spp. [32]. Recently a new high throughput micro-fluidics system, the LabChip 90 equipment (Caliper Life Sciences), was developed. This platform can be considered particularly useful when dealing with a large number of samples in short time. Therefore we evaluated the LabChip 90 system for MLVA BB-94 purchase typing of Brucella strains applying the selected subset of 16 loci proposed by Al-Dahouk et al. [12] to fifty-three field isolates and ten DNA samples provided in 2006 for Brucella suis ring-trial. Furthermore, twelve DNA samples, provided in 2007 for a MLVA VNTR ring trial and seventeen human Brucella isolates whose MLVA fingerprinting profiles were previously resolved [32, 33], were de novo genotyped. Results By means of MLVA-16 on LabChip 90 (Caliper

Life Sciences) sixty-three DNA samples, fifty-three field isolates of Brucella (Table 1) and ten DNA provided for Brucella suis ring-trial, were analysed for investigating Necrostatin-1 solubility dmso a broader number of loci. In order to set up the system, Thiamet G DNA samples, previously genotyped by sequencing system and Agilent technology [32, 33], were reanalyzed. DNA from all ninety-two isolates was amplified at 16 loci (MLVA-16 typing assay) to generate multiple band profiles. The LabChip 90 equipment acquires the sample in less than a minute and the analysis of 96 samples in less than an hour. After PCR amplification 5 μl of each reaction was loaded into a 96-well plate and the amplification product size estimates were obtained by the LabChip Gx Software. The data produced by

the Caliper system showed band sizing discrepancies compared with data obtained from other electrophoresis platforms. Therefore a conversion table that would allow the allocation of the correct alleles to the range of fragment sizes was created. The table contained for each locus the expected size, the range of observed sizes, including arithmetical average ± standard deviation, and the corresponding allele (Table 2). The variability range for each allele was established experimentally by the analysis of different strain amplification products. Furthermore, in order to look at intra- and interchip variability, each allele was analyzed by repeating five times the analysis on the same chip and different chips.