Isothermal amplification, explained simply

The problem with thermal cycling

Conventional PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) amplifies DNA by repeatedly heating and cooling a sample through precise temperature cycles, often 20 to 40 times per run. That cycling requires a thermal cycler: a piece of lab equipment that's expensive, power-hungry, and dependent on stable electricity and trained operators.

For point-of-care and field settings, a shrimp pond, a rural clinic, a poultry farm, that equipment dependency has long been the barrier between "lab-grade accuracy" and "usable where it's actually needed."

How D-ISO NAAT works

D-NOME's patented D-ISO NAAT (Nucleic Acid Amplification Technology) platform uses a synthetic molecular circuit that amplifies target DNA or RNA at a single, constant ambient temperature, between 30°C and 45°C, rather than cycling between temperatures. This is what makes it "isothermal."

Because there's no need to ramp temperature up and down, D-ISO NAAT doesn't require a thermal cycler at all for its lateral-flow (LFA) format, just a simple heat source or even ambient room temperature, depending on the assay. For applications needing quantitative data, the same chemistry runs on D-NOME's portable PupaQuant real-time PCR devices.

Why it matters in the field

• No bulky, power-hungry thermal cycling equipment required
• Validated on 500+ clinical samples with >95% sensitivity and specificity
• Compatible with D-SWIFT extraction for a complete sample-to-answer workflow
• Patent-protected synthetic biology circuit design, developed in-house

Two result formats, one platform

D-ISO NAAT supports two read-out formats depending on the use case: a 35-minute lateral flow (LFA) end-point result for simple positive/negative field screening, and a real-time quantitative format on PupaQuant devices for applications that need precise viral or bacterial load data, both built on the same underlying molecular circuitry.