Post by williamplayer on Jan 15, 2015 13:52:17 GMT
New Graphene-Based Biosensor a Triple Threat
Biosensors—electronic devices that can detect the presence of proteins and other biological molecules—have a wide variety of applications, from medical diagnostics and food safety, to security and law enforcement. But current biosensors need to be custom-built to detect a specific target.
A team of Penn engineers, led by Ertugrul Cubukcu, an assistant professor in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, has devised a new kind of graphene-based biosensor that works in three ways at once. Because proteins trigger three different types of signals, the sensor can triangulate this information to produce more sensitive and accurate results.
Not only does this technique provide better data on the quantity of a given protein in a sample, the technique could eventually be used to make a single biosensor that could detect and differentiate a wide range of proteins.
“In a typical single mode biosensor, you have two proteins that interact strongly. You attach protein A to your sensor and, when protein B binds to it, the sensor transduces that binding into some sort of electrical signal,” Cubukcu says. “But it’s kind of a dumb sensor in that it can only tell you if that kind of binding has occurred.
“But let’s say you have proteins A, B, C, and D, all with different physical properties, like charge and mass,” he continues. “If you had a sensor that was sensitive to several of those properties, you could tell the difference between those binding events without starting with corresponding proteins for all of them.”
READ FULL ARTICLE: www.upenn.edu/pennnews/current/2015-01-15/latest-news/new-graphene-based-biosensor-triple-threat
Biosensors—electronic devices that can detect the presence of proteins and other biological molecules—have a wide variety of applications, from medical diagnostics and food safety, to security and law enforcement. But current biosensors need to be custom-built to detect a specific target.
A team of Penn engineers, led by Ertugrul Cubukcu, an assistant professor in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, has devised a new kind of graphene-based biosensor that works in three ways at once. Because proteins trigger three different types of signals, the sensor can triangulate this information to produce more sensitive and accurate results.
Not only does this technique provide better data on the quantity of a given protein in a sample, the technique could eventually be used to make a single biosensor that could detect and differentiate a wide range of proteins.
“In a typical single mode biosensor, you have two proteins that interact strongly. You attach protein A to your sensor and, when protein B binds to it, the sensor transduces that binding into some sort of electrical signal,” Cubukcu says. “But it’s kind of a dumb sensor in that it can only tell you if that kind of binding has occurred.
“But let’s say you have proteins A, B, C, and D, all with different physical properties, like charge and mass,” he continues. “If you had a sensor that was sensitive to several of those properties, you could tell the difference between those binding events without starting with corresponding proteins for all of them.”
READ FULL ARTICLE: www.upenn.edu/pennnews/current/2015-01-15/latest-news/new-graphene-based-biosensor-triple-threat