A Portable CGE System for Cell Free DNA Detection

Cell free DNA (cfDNA) is present in human blood at varying levels, generally from 1 to 50 ng per mL of plasma. It is typically 100–500 bp in length (with most fragments about 160–180 bp long), making traditional DNA extraction difficult. The key to successful analysis of cfDNA is to ensure efficient purification of smaller DNA fragments (100–500 bp). For this study, the researchers used the cfPure cell free DNA extraction kit from BioChain (Newark, CA), which efficiently recovers these important small fragments. The kit employs a magnetic bead-based DNA extraction method for the recovered cell free DNA. For sensitive applications such as next-generation sequencing, kit performance is comparable to currently available spin column-based cfDNA kits. The recovered DNA is suitable for a wide range of downstream applications, such as bisulfite sequencing, NGS, and qPCR.