The present invention relates to modular sample processing apparatus kit that can be used to process samples that may contain one or more analytes of interest.
Many different chemical, biochemical, and other reactions are sensitive to temperature variations. Examples of thermal processes in the area of genetic amplification include, but are not limited to, Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), Sanger sequencing, etc. The reactions may be enhanced or inhibited based on the temperatures of the materials involved. Although it may be possible to process samples individually and obtain accurate sample-to-sample results, individual processing can be time-consuming and expensive.
A variety of sample processing devices and apparatus have been developed to process samples quickly and efficiently. Examples of some particularly useful sample processing devices may be found in, e.g., commonly-assigned U.S. Pat. No. 6,734,401 titled ENHANCED SAMPLE PROCESSING DEVICES SYSTEMS AND METHODS (Bedingham et al.).
Although these sample processing devices are useful, in many instances they provide significantly larger numbers of process chambers (e.g., 96, 384 or more process chambers) than needed for a particular assay (in which as few as one process chamber and associated reagents may be needed). Furthermore, many of these sample processing devices contain reagents that are by far the most costly component of the sample processing device. As a result, using only a portion of the process chambers and the reagents contained in a sample processing device can be prohibitively expensive.