One out of every six American women has been the victim of a sexual assault in their lifetime. However, the DNA casework backlog continues to increase outpacing the nation's capacity since DNA evidence processing in sexual assault casework remains a bottleneck due to laborious and time‐consuming differential extraction of victim's and perpetrator's cells. Additionally, a significant amount (60–90%) of male DNA evidence may be lost with existing procedures. Here, a microfluidic method is developed that selectively captures sperm using a unique oligosaccharide sequence (Sialyl‐Lewis^X), a major carbohydrate ligand for sperm‐egg binding. This method is validated with forensic mock samples dating back to 2003, resulting in 70–92% sperm capture efficiency and a 60–92% reduction in epithelial fraction. Captured sperm are then lysed on‐chip and sperm DNA is isolated. This method reduces assay‐time from 8 h to 80 min, providing an inexpensive alternative to current differential extraction techniques, accelerating identification of suspects and advancing public safety.

中文翻译：

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法医案件中精子差异提取的新型芯片方法

六分之一的美国女性一生中都曾遭受过性侵犯。然而，由于受害人和施暴者细胞的差异提取费力且耗时，性侵犯案件中的 DNA 证据处理仍然是一个瓶颈，因此 DNA 案件积压继续增加，超过了国家的处理能力。此外，现有程序可能会丢失大量 (60-90%) 的男性 DNA 证据。在这里，开发了一种微流体方法，使用独特的寡糖序列（Sialyl-Lewis ^X）选择性捕获精子，寡糖序列是精卵结合的主要碳水化合物配体。该方法经过 2003 年法医模拟样本的验证，精子捕获效率达到 70-92%，上皮细胞分数减少 60-92%。然后捕获的精子在芯片上裂解并分离精子 DNA。该方法将检测时间从 8 小时缩短至 80 分钟，为当前差异提取技术提供了一种廉价的替代方案，加速了嫌疑人的识别并提高了公共安全。