Hitachi-high-technologies Corporation

Takuya Matsui

Ryoji Inaba

Satoshi Takahashi

Kazumichi Imai

Takanobu Haga

Nobutaka Kumazaki

Shuhei Yamamoto

Motohiro Yamazaki

Muneo Maeshima

Ryusuke Kimura

Tomoyuki Sakai

Yuji Miyahara

Toshiro Saito

Hiroyuki Higashino

Tsuyoshi Sonehara

Akira Maekawa

Kohshi Maeda

Masatoshi Narahara

Hirokazu Kato

Yuichiro Ota

Takayuki Obara

Yoshiaki Sugimura

Kumiko Hattori

All of bio-related substances, such as cells or bacteria, are placed at single and independent positions. A flow cell according to the present invention is used for analyzing a bio-related substance and includes a flow passageway and an injection opening and a discharge opening that are connected to the flow passageway. The flow passageway is provided with trapping structural members for trapping the bio-related substance. The trapping structural members include a structure forming a dead water region in which the bio-related substance is trapped.

Flow cell, analysis equipment and analysis method using same

Provided is an analyzer capable of reducing the amount of wasted reagents and shortening time required for solution sending, thus increasing throughput for analysis. A microsyringe sucks a minimum required amount of reagent that is substantially the same amount of capacity of a flow cell to a sampling nozzle. Then, the sampling nozzle is inserted into an injection port of the flow cell, and the reagent is injected into the flow cell by driving the microsyringe. The inside of the sampling nozzle is cleaned by moving the sampling nozzle to the cleaning tank and ejecting cleaning water from the sampling nozzle, and the outside of the sampling nozzle is cleaned by spraying cleaning water from an inner wall of the cleaning tank.

Analyzer

Provided is a reaction device for nucleic acid analysis wherein microparticles, which carry a nucleic acid to be detected having been immobilized thereon, are aligned in a lattice form on a substrate according to the pixel size of a two-dimensional sensor. By this reaction device for nucleic acid analysis which is provided with a channel-forming reaction chamber on the substrate (), the nucleic acid having been immobilized on the microparticles () on the substrate () is detected. The microparticles (), which carry the nucleic acid to be detected having been immobilized thereon, are arranged by microstructures () aligned on the substrate ().

Nucleic acid analyzer, reaction device for nucleic acid analysis and substrate of reaction device for nucleic acid analysis

A chilled reagent container comprises a reagent vessel containing part for containing therein a plurality of reagent vessels, a container lid including a container lid hole through which the reagent vessels contained by the reagent vessel containing part are accessible, and a cooling block for cooling the reagent vessels contained by the reagent vessel containing part, wherein the container lid slides to be changeable between an opened situation wherein the reagent is accessible from an outside and a closed situation wherein the reagent is prevented from being accessed from the outside, wherein the chilled reagent container further comprises a reagent container packing including another hole through which the reagent vessels are accessible and arranged between the container lid and the reagent vessel containing part to be pressed against the container lid.

Chilled reagent container and nucleic acid analyzer

The present invention has an object to provide a method for efficiently detecting an image with a smaller number of pixels. The invention relates to fluorescence analysis which uses a substrate having a plurality of regions for being capable of immobilizing biologically-related molecules in positions of lattice points of a lattice structure, and which causes the fluorescence from a certain lattice point to be wavelength-dispersed in a direction other than the direction toward the adjacent closest lattice point. According to an embodiment, for example, the number of pixels of a two-dimensional sensor required for fluorescence analysis of the regions with the biologically-related molecules immobilized can be set to several hundred times to fifty times smaller than that in the conventional case without degrading the measurement accuracy. This can achieve the improvement of throughput, reduction in price, and/or improvement of the operability of an analyzing device.

Fluorescence analyzing device and fluorescence analyzing method

An object of the present invention relates to observation of single molecule fluorescence while temperature of a sample solution is controlled by a temperature controller and intrinsic fluorescence of the temperature controller is avoided, in a total internal reflection microscope. The present invention relates to provision of an opening at areas of the temperature controller through which incident light and reflected light pass, and configuration adopting a material with intrinsic fluorescence lower than that of the other parts, in a total internal reflection microscope including a prism and the temperature controller. The present invention enables intrinsic fluorescence of the temperature controller to be suppressed, which allows highly sensitive fluorescence observation while controlling sample solution temperature with high precision. For instance, this in turn allows the throughput of single molecule DNA sequencing using a total internal reflection microscope to be improved.

Total internal reflection microscope apparatus and method for analyzing fluorescent sample

The present invention aims at reducing background noise derived from a substance that is present in the vicinity of a target substance such as a DNA and protein and attached to the surface of a substrate without an effect on a fluorescent dye labeling the target substance. The substrate that has a probe and is capable of interacting with the target substance is irradiated with noise removing light such that an evanescent field is generated on the surface of the substrate. A target substance and a foreign particle, which are non-specifically stuck to the surface of the substrate, are decomposed by the evanescent field generated by the irradiation with the noise removing light. The evanescent field present near the surface of the substrate has almost no effect on the probe. It is possible to reduce the background noise derived from the substance that is present in the vicinity of the target substance and attached to the surface of the substrate and suppress effects on the probe and the target substance interacting with the probe.

Method for fluorescence analysis and fluorescence analyzer

A nucleic acid contained in a sample is quantified with high accuracy. The procedure includes the step of allowing the sample containing a specific nucleic acid to interact with a DNA microarray provided with a plurality of nucleic acid probe parts having a nucleic acid probe capable of hybridizing to the specific nucleic acid; the step of monitoring outputs from each of the plurality of nucleic acid probe parts due to hybridization between the nucleic acid probe and the specific nucleic acid to determine normal distribution of time taken to reach a predetermined output value with respect to each of the plurality of nucleic acid probe parts; and the step of quantifying the specific nucleic acid contained in the sample based on a maximum value determined from the normal distribution obtained in the above step.

Method of detecting nucleic acid by using DNA microarrays and nucleic acid detection apparatus

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Mito, Japan

Takuya Matsui