Boom method

[note 1] While the chaotropic effect was previously known and reported by other scientists,[10][note 2] Boom et al. contributed an optimization of the method to complex starting materials,[1] such as body fluids and other biological starting materials, and provided a short procedure according to the Boom et al.

In particular, amorphous silicon oxide and glass powder, alkylsilica, aluminum silicate (zeolite), or, activated silica with -NH2, are all suitable as nucleic acid binding solid phase material according to this method.

Today, the concepts of the Boom method, characterized by utilizing magnetic silica particles, are widely used.

The fundamental process for isolating nucleic acid from starting material of Boom method consists of the following 4 steps[1][2][3][4] (See Fig.

Lysate of starting material is obtained by addition of a detergent in the presence of protein degrading enzymes.

Lysate of starting material of (a) is mixed with silica beads and sufficiently large amounts of chaotropic substance.

According to the chaotropic effect, released nucleic acids will be bound to the silica beads almost instantaneously.

The reasons why nucleic acids and silica form bonds will be described in the following section (Basic principles).

By altering the experimental conditions, especially the composition of reagents (chaotropic substance, wash buffer, etc) more specific isolation can be achieved.

For example, some compositions of reagents are suitable for obtaining long double-stranded DNA or short single-stranded RNA.

A wide variety of starting biological material are available, including whole blood, blood serum, buffy coat, urine, feces, cerebrospinal fluid, sperm, saliva, tissues, cell cultures, food products, or vaccines.

[14] A nucleic acid extraction apparatus incorporating Tajima pipettes typically consists of:[14] (a) Capturing of the magnetic beads.

An example of the operations of the nucleic acid extraction apparatus which incorporates Tajima pipette are typically as shown in Fig.

Fig. 1: Boom method by Tajima pipette and magnetic silica beads. [ 14 ] Schematic structure of Tajima pipette are shown in Fig. 2. Apparatus and methods [ 14 ] are mainly intended to the immune system. However, alternative embodiment for nucleic acids extraction assay are also mentioned in this patent and procedure of Fig.1 is generally similar to Boom method.
Fig. 2: Schematic structure of Tajima pipette