Molecular manipulation and analysis are the cornerstone of life sciences. With the recent advances in molecular data storage and computing, it has become an increasingly exciting and viable alternative for the post-CMOS scaling era. Widespread use of molecular manipulation/analysis and data storage/computing requires a scalable and low-cost platform for hybrid molecular-electronics systems. This enables us to build on the best of what molecular and electronics systems can offer. In this article, we present PurpleDrop, a full-stack digital microfluidic platform for hybrid molecular-electronic systems in multiple domains, and focus on DNA data storage as a use case. We describe its design principles and relevant aspects such as closed-loop operation with computer vision and capacitive sensing, on-board magnetic bead extraction, and polymerase chain reaction, among other primitives. Importantly, we emphasize the ability to express and execute protocols and computation that include molecular and computational components.

中文翻译：

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PurpleDrop：基于数字微流体的混合分子电子应用平台

分子操纵和分析是生命科学的基石。随着分子数据存储和计算的最新进展，它已成为后 CMOS 缩放时代越来越令人兴奋和可行的替代方案。分子操作/分析和数据存储/计算的广泛使用需要用于混合分子电子系统的可扩展且低成本的平台。这使我们能够利用分子和电子系统所能提供的最好的东西。在本文中，我们介绍了 PurpleDrop，这是一个用于多领域混合分子电子系统的全栈数字微流体平台，并以 DNA 数据存储为用例。我们描述了它的设计原理和相关方面，例如具有计算机视觉和电容传感的闭环操作、机载磁珠提取、和聚合酶链反应，以及其他原语。重要的是，我们强调表达和执行包括分子和计算组件在内的协议和计算的能力。