Electrochemical Sensors for the Sensitive and Selective Dectection of DNA

Speaker: Margret Guthrie
Advisor: Dr. Alexander Arnold

The ability to detect DNA using biosensors has become an area of intense research recently due to its potential application in a wide variety of fields, including drug discovery, pathology, food safety, clinical diagnostics and more. The ultra-sensitive detection of biological analytes using nanomaterials has made great advancements in recent years, with a wide variety of materials being investigated for these potential applications. Electroanalytical techniques have been implemented with these DNA biosensors, resulting in sensitive, selective, portable, and low cost methods. The biosensors summarized in this talk are employed for recognition and quantitative detection of DNA as applied to cancer diagnosis. Cyclic and pulsed voltammetric techniques are employed to characterize the fabrication of these sensors and to quantitate the amounts of DNA from human samples, respectively. These sensors hold promise for the detection of DNA mutations that enable better diagnosis for diseases such as cancer.

Selected Citations:
Chen, G. et al. Analytical Chimica Acta 2014, 849, 1-6.
Evtugyn, G.A. et al. Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology 2014, 14(9), 6738-6749.
Wang, T. et al. Analytical Chemistry 2014, 86, 12064-12069.
Wang, X. et al. Analytical Biochemistry 2014, 466, 51-58.