In-Depth Electrochemical Investigation of Surface Attachment Chemistry via Carbodiimide Coupling.

Aminoferrocene is used as an electroactive indicator to investigate carbodiimide coupling reactions on a carboxylic acid-functionalized self-assembled monolayer. The commonly used attachment chemistry with 1-ethyl-3-(3-(dimethylamino)propyl)carbodiimide hydrochloride (EDC) and N-hydroxysuccinimide (NHS) is used for surface activation. A number of conditions are investigated, including EDC and NHS concentration, buffer solutions, incubation timing, and aminoferrocene concentration.

Detection of target-probe oligonucleotide hybridization using synthetic nanopore resistive pulse sensing.

Despite the plethora of DNA sensor platforms available, a portable, sensitive, selective and economic sensor able to rival current fluorescence-based techniques would find use in many applications. In this research, probe oligonucleotide-grafted particles are used to detect target DNA in solution through a resistive pulse nanopore detection technique. Using carbodiimide chemistry, functionalized probe DNA strands are attached to carboxylated dextran-based magnetic particles.

Development of an electrochemical polypyrrole-based DNA sensor and subsequent studies on the effects of probe and target length on performance.

DNA sensors have a wide scope of applications in the present and emerging medical and scientific fields, such as medical diagnostics and forensic investigations. However, much research-to-date on DNA sensor development has focused on short target DNA strands as model genes. In this communication we study the effect of the length of oligonucleotide probe and target strands as a significant step towards real world applications for DNA detection.