Abstract
During 1997, we designed and built a 10-chamber thermal cycling system which was capable of performing the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) using TaqMan® probes. Each chamber includes a thin-film resistive heater which was deposited directly on the microfabricated silicon chamber, for efficient heating, and the design of the silicon chambers permitted efficient, forced-convective cooling with air. Each silicon chamber contained etched holes for directly exciting the TaqMan® probes and monitoring their fluorescence emission. Our software, which controlled the thermal cycling, monitored the TaqMan® emission from each chamber on every thermal cycle, and performed automatic calling of positives for each chamber. We used this system at Dugway Proving Grounds in January, 1998, during the detector/identifier portion of the Joint Field Trials IV. With this system, we were able to detect and identify all three organisms that were used as simulants during JFT IV; this required the analysis of 32 unknowns per day for 10 days.
