It is important not to dilute the initial sample before loading it. To help you understand this, you must know what dilution is.
Dilution is a common method for analyzing samples but can cause problems.
An initial sample must be undiluted for the Chip-on-a-Chip (COACH) technology to work.
When you dilute your initial sample, you add water or some other solvent (like alcohol) to increase the volume of the solution.
This is because lab-on-a-chip technology works on relatively small liquid volumes.
This article explains how diluting your initial sample will affect your results and why it’s important not to dilute before loading it onto the chip.
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What It Means To Dilute The Initial Sample Before It Has Been Loaded
Dilution is a way to reduce the concentration of an analyte in an initial sample.
It’s not required for every sample, but it will help ensure that you have at least some of your target substances in your test results.
For example, if your test results don’t show any positive results on a particular compound and you know that it should be there due to its presence in other samples.
Then dilution could help increase your chances of finding it by decreasing its concentration from 1 part per million (ppm) to 0.1 ppm—a thousandfold decrease!
The downside is that dilution decreases accuracy.
If your goal is simply detecting whether or not any compounds are present during testing procedures, such as PCR amplification or PCR-based LCR assays, then allowing for some degree of imprecision won’t matter too much.
It is because those tests aren’t used often enough by scientists working with biological samples.
Rather, it is employed primarily by pharmaceutical companies trying out new drugs before releasing them onto the market.
They usually aim to make money.
The point is that dilution can be used to your advantage if you know what you’re doing and how to properly use it to help increase your chances of finding a certain compound within a test result.
And yes! That screams selfishness.
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Reasons Why It Is Important Not To Dilute The Initial Sample Before It Has Been Loaded
There are practical reasons why it is important not to dilute the initial sample before loading it.
Here are a few reasons:
Uneven Results
The initial sample must be undiluted to detect very low concentrations of the analyte.
The initial sample should not be diluted for good results until loaded onto the chip.
Dilution can lead to uneven results and increased time required for analysis.
A basic dilution is performed by mixing a known amount of reagent with an unknown sample (e.g., 10% solution).
This process requires additional equipment and time compared with loading directly from a container into your instrument’s sample chamber.
Expense
Dilution takes up space, so it’s important not to dilute your initial sample until you’ve already loaded it onto your instrument.
You also have to spend more time and money on the process.
If you dilute a sample, you need more reagents and equipment.
Also, if you’re using an automated system for loading samples onto your chips, then you’ll need another setup just for dilutions—which means more money spent on equipment!
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Complications
Dilution requires additional reagents and equipment.
The initial sample can only be diluted with reagents that are compatible with each other.
It means that if you use a different solvent for your reaction than what should be ideal, or if you add an acidifier during loading, these changes will affect how much material gets transferred into the solution during dilution.
If you don’t know how much dilution will work best for each sample type, diluting too much may make your results inaccurate.
It could be due to suspension control or actual error that you introduced by mixing different types of molecules into one solution.
These are all unnecessary complications.
Uneven Separation
The most common cause for uneven separation is diluting the initial sample before loading it.
When using a centrifuge to prepare a sample for separation, you mustn’t overfill your tube with liquid or mix too much of it.
It can lead to uneven separation and low signal intensity, leading to low sensitivity and accuracy.
Is It Important To Dilute The Initial Sample Before It Has Been Loaded
The only reason dilution is important is when we wish to get a better idea of whether or not a compound is present in the solution being tested.
For example, if we were testing a blood sample for alcohol levels but the person being tested had been drinking prior (or just recently), this would result in an inaccurate reading.
This is because their body would be metabolizing alcohol rapidly, leaving no time for any other compounds present within the bloodstream to be detected by our testing equipment.
In this case, it would not be possible to accurately detect any alcohol levels within the sample because of how quickly they would metabolize.
To ensure this doesn’t happen, we perform a dilution test to help slow down the process and get an accurate reading of the compounds present within the solution being tested.
Conclusion
It is important to understand that dilution of the initial sample before it has been loaded onto the chip will result in a lower signal-to-noise ratio and an increased likelihood of false positives.
In addition, there are additional reagents and equipment required for dilution, which can add high costs to any laboratory workflow.
Therefore, we recommend that laboratories use only one type of instrument or method when performing their analysis and endeavor not to dilute the initial sample before it has been loaded.
