Dr. Eric Lagally

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Our laboratory investigates the use of integrated microsystems to address pressing challenges in bioscience. The first major area we address is affinity reagent selection. Affinity reagents (including antibodies, aptamers, peptides, and small molecules) are widely used in many areas of bioscience, but the methods used to isolate or evolve these reagents from a large library of possible reagents is often slow and cost-intensive. Integrated microsystems can alleviate these drawbacks through 1) reduction of volumes, which decreases precursor usage and can increase reaction kinetics due to small diffusion lengths; 2) increases in assay speed due to improved thermal transfer; and 3) integration of many separate steps onto a single device, which reduces contamination and further increases throughput. Increases in the availability of affinity reagents isolated using our technology promise to provide new reagents for biosensing, enhance investigations in systems biology, and aid in the design and development of novel therapeutics.

Our second major research focus is the development of rapid and sensitive detectors for rare analytes, particularly bacterial pathogens. Pathogen detection is a difficult analytical challenge because such organisms can be very rare components of complex mixtures, but even at low concentrations can be successful instigators of disease. It is therefore important to develop sensitive detectors capable of differentiating pathogens from commensal organisms in complex samples, including wastewater, bodily fluids, and food. Most bacterial pathogens are capable of rapid evolution through horizontal gene transfer within and between species, and so our approaches strive to combine affinity purification and concentration of bacteria with genetic detection methods capable of cataloging and characterizing subtle differences between single bacterial cells. The results of such work are applicable to clinical testing, epidemiology, and field-capable systems for remote monitoring.

Lai RY, Lagally ET, Lee SH, Soh HT, Plaxco KW, Heeger AJ. Rapid, sequence-specific detection of unpurified PCR amplicons via a reusable, electrochemical sensor. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 103(11):4017-21. (2006).

Lagally ET, Lee SH, Soh HT. Integrated microsystem for dielectrophoretic cell concentration and genetic detection. Lab Chip 5(10):1053-8. (2005).

Kamei T, Toriello NM, Lagally ET, Blazej RG, Scherer JR, Street RA, Mathies RA. Microfluidic genetic analysis with an integrated a-Si:H detector. Biomed Microdevices 7(2):147-52. (2005).

Lagally ET, Scherer JR, Blazej RG, Toriello NM, Diep BA, Ramchandani M, Sensabaugh GF, Riley LW, Mathies RA. Integrated portable genetic analysis microsystem for pathogen/infectious disease detection. Anal Chem 76(11):3162-70. (2004).

Lagally ET, Emrich CA, Mathies RA. Fully integrated PCR-capillary electrophoresis microsystem for DNA analysis. Lab Chip 1(2):102-7. (2001).

Lagally ET, Medintz I, Mathies RA. Single-molecule DNA amplification and analysis in an integrated microfluidic device. Anal Chem 73(3):565-70. (2001).