Increasing cDNA Yields from Single-cell Quantities of mRNA in Standard Laboratory Reverse Transcriptase Reactions using Acoustic MicrostreamingWah Chin Boon 1, Karolina Petkovic-Duran 2, Yonggang Zhu 2, Richard Manasseh 3, Malcolm K. Horne 1, Tim D. Aumann 1
1Florey Neuroscience Institutes and Centre for Neuroscience, University of Melbourne, 2Fluid Dynamics Group, CSIRO Materials Science and Engineering, 3Swinburne University of Technology, Faculty of Engineering and Industrial Sciences
We describe a novel method for increasing cDNA yield from single-cell quantities of mRNA in otherwise standard laboratory reverse transcription reactions. The novelty resides in the use of a micromixer, which utilizes the phenomenon of acoustic microstreaming, to mix fluids at microliter scales more effectively than shaking, vortexing or trituration.