Abstract: 【Objective】The objectives of this study are to explore the effect of microfluidic electrophoresis on detection of PCR products, build a detection method for Tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV) by electrophoresis in microfluidic chip, and to remedy the defect in reagent consumption, long time, lack of safety of agarose gel electrophoresis.【Method】Primers in relatively stable positions of TYLCV genome were designed, some primers in references were taken into account, and these selected primers were verified. TYLCV primers were screened out based on the criterion of specificity, stability, and sensitivity. DNA standards φX174/BsuR I (Hae Ⅲ) marker was subjected to agarose gel electrophoresis and microfluidic electrophoresis, and the two methods were compared in supplies, time-consumption and sensitivity to confirm the value of microfluidic electrophoresis in nucleic acid detection. In order to evaluate the value of microfluidic electrophoresis in virus detection, the PCR amplification products of one pair of selected primers on the actual samples were processed by microfluidic electrophoresis.【Result】Fourteen pairs of TYLCV primers were screened out, 2 pairs came from the literatures and the other 12 pairs were designed in this study. Each pair of primers could meet the requirement for microfluidic detection. TYLCV-T was chosen from these primers for the subsequent study. By comparison of agarose gel electrophoresis and microfluidic electrophoresis, the time consumption and reagent consumption of microfluidic electrophoresis were 1/10 and 1/8 of those of agarose gel electrophoresis, respectively. The detection sensitivity of microfluidic electrophoresis was at least 103 times higher than that of agarose gel electrophoresis, which could detect accurately 5×10-6 μg?μL-1 of nucleic acid according to calculation of the DNA standards concentration. By comparing the microfluidic electrophoresis peak of the sample with that of DNA marker, the size of the nucleic acid could be determined.【Conclusion】Primers of TYLCV were screened, which can be used for further study of virus detection by microfluidic technology. Microfluidic electrophoresis was more dominant than agarose gel electrophoresis in sensitivity, effectiveness, reagent consumption and time saving. Microfluidic electrophoresis detection was initially established, which provides a new rapid detection approach for TYLCV.

Key words: Tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV) , microfluidic electrophoresis , agarose gel electrophoresis , rapid detection