Search results for "biosensing"
showing 10 items of 108 documents
Birth of the Localized Surface Plasmon Resonance in Monolayer-Protected Gold Nanoclusters
2013
Gold nanoclusters protected by a thiolate monolayer (MPC) are widely studied for their potential applications in site-specific bioconjugate labeling, sensing, drug delivery, and molecular electronics. Several MPCs with 1-2 nm metal cores are currently known to have a well-defined molecular structure, and they serve as an important link between molecularly dispersed gold and colloidal gold to understand the size-dependent electronic and optical properties. Here, we show by using an ab initio method together with atomistic models for experimentally observed thiolate-stabilized gold clusters how collective electronic excitations change when the gold core of the MPC grows from 1.5 to 2.0 nm. A …
Visible Photoluminescence of Variable-Length Zinc Oxide Nanorods Embedded in Porous Anodic Alumina Template for Biosensor Applications
2021
Zinc oxide (ZnO) and porous anodic aluminum oxide (PAAO) are technologically important materials, rich with features that are of interest in optical applications, for example, in light-emitting and sensing devices. Here, we present synthesis method of aligned ZnO nanorods (NR) with 40 nm diameter and variable length in 150 to 500 nm range obtained by atomic layer deposition (ALD) of ZnO in pores of continuously variable thickness PAAO. The relative intensity of yellow (1.99 eV), green (2.35 eV), and blue (2.82 eV) photoluminescence (PL) components originating from the different types of defects, varied with non-monotonic dependency on the composite film thickness with a Fabry–Pérot like mod…
CRISPR-Cas12a-Based Detection of SARS-CoV-2 Harboring the E484K Mutation
2021
The novel respiratory virus SARS-CoV-2 is rapidly evolving across the world with the potential of increasing its transmission and the induced disease. Here, we applied the CRISPR-Cas12a system to detect, without the need of sequencing, SARS-CoV-2 genomes harboring the E484K mutation, first identified in the Beta variant and catalogued as an escape mutation. The E484K mutation creates a canonical protospacer adjacent motif for Cas12a recognition in the resulting DNA amplicon, which was exploited to obtain a differential readout. We analyzed a series of fecal samples from hospitalized patients in Valencia (Spain), finding one infection with SARS-CoV-2 harboring the E484K mutation, which was t…
"Writing biochips": high-resolution droplet-to-droplet manufacturing of analytical platforms.
2022
The development of high-resolution molecular printing allows the engineering of analytical platforms enabling applications at the interface between chemistry and biology, i.e. in biosensing, electronics, single-cell biology, and point-of-care diagnostics. Their successful implementation stems from the combination of large area printing at resolutions from sub-100 nm up to macroscale, whilst controlling the composition and the volume of the ink, and reconfiguring the deposition features in due course. Similarly to handwriting pens, the engineering of continuous writing systems tackles the issue of the tedious ink replenishment between different printing steps. To this aim, this review articl…
Cardiac Glycosides Exert Anticancer Effects by Inducing Immunogenic Cell Death
2012
Some successful chemotherapeutics, notably anthracyclines and oxaliplatin, induce a type of cell stress and death that is immunogenic, hence converting the patient's dying cancer cells into a vaccine that stimulates antitumor immune responses. By means of a fluorescence microscopy platform that allows for the automated detection of the biochemical hallmarks of such a peculiar cell death modality, we identified cardiac glycosides (CGs) as exceptionally efficient inducers of immunogenic cell death, an effect that was associated with the in- hibition of the plasma membrane Na + - and K + -dependent adenosine triphosphatase (Na + /K + -ATPase). CGs ex- acerbated the antineoplastic effects of DN…
Bioassays to monitor taspase1 function for the identification of pharmacogenetic inhibitors
2011
Background Threonine Aspartase 1 (Taspase1) mediates cleavage of the mixed lineage leukemia (MLL) protein and leukemia provoking MLL-fusions. In contrast to other proteases, the understanding of Taspase1's (patho)biological relevance and function is limited, since neither small molecule inhibitors nor cell based functional assays for Taspase1 are currently available. Methodology/Findings Efficient cell-based assays to probe Taspase1 function in vivo are presented here. These are composed of glutathione S-transferase, autofluorescent protein variants, Taspase1 cleavage sites and rational combinations of nuclear import and export signals. The biosensors localize predominantly to the cytoplasm…
Towards the determination of isoprene in human breath using substrate-integrated hollow waveguide mid-infrared sensors
2014
Selected volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in breath may be considered biomarkers if they are indicative of distinct diseases or disease states. Given the inherent molecular selectivity of vibrational spectroscopy, infrared sensing technologies appear ideally suitable for the determination of endogenous VOCs in breath. The aim of this study was to determine that mid-infrared (MIR; 3-20 µm) gas phase sensing is capable of determining isoprene in exhaled breath as an exemplary medically relevant VOC by hyphenating novel substrate-integrated hollow waveguides (iHWG) with a likewise miniaturized preconcentration system. A compact preconcentrator column for sampling isoprene from exhaled breath …
Biosensors for the determination of SARS-CoV-2 virus and diagnosis of COVID-19 infection
2022
Monitoring and tracking infection is required in order to reduce the spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), induced by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). To achieve this goal, the development and deployment of quick, accurate, and sensitive diagnostic methods are necessary. The determination of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is performed by biosensing devices, which vary according to detection methods and the biomarkers which are inducing/providing an analytical signal. RNA hybridisation, antigen-antibody affinity interaction, and a variety of other biological reactions are commonly used to generate analytical signals that can be precisely detected using electro…
Optimization of fluorescence enhancement for silicon-based microarrays
2008
An optical technique for the enhancement of fluorescence detection sensitivity on planar samples is presented. Such a technique is based on the simultaneous optimization of excitation and light collection by properly combining interference and reflectance from the sample holder. Comparative tests have been performed in microarray applications, by evaluating the proposed solution against commercial glass-based devices, using popular labeling dyes, such as Cy3 and Cy5. The proposed technique is implemented on a substrate built with standard silicon technology and is therefore well suited for integrated micro total analysis systems (microTAS) applications.
Development of a biosensor for copper detection in aqueous solutions using an Anemonia sulcata recombinant GFP.
2014
Fluorescent proteins from marine organisms represent potential candidates for biosensor development. In this paper, we described the isolation of a native green fluorescent protein from Anemonia sulcata and the cloning and purification of its equivalent as a recombinant protein in Escherichia coli. Furthermore, the spectroscopic behaviours of the native and recombinant GFPs were investigated as a function of Cu2+, Cd2+, Pb 2+ and Ni2+ concentration. Our results suggest the high selectivity of both proteins at copper than the other metals and, for the recombinant protein, a great sensitivity at a very low concentration (0.1-1 μM). Moreover, starting from these data, using the combination of …