Scientific reports 2013-01-01

An impedance-based integrated biosensor for suspended DNA characterization.

Hanbin Ma, Richard W R Wallbank, Reza Chaji, Jiahao Li, Yuji Suzuki, Chris Jiggins, Arokia Nathan

Index: Sci. Rep. 3 , 2730, (2013)

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Abstract

Herein, we describe a novel integrated biosensor for performing dielectric spectroscopy to analyze biological samples. We analyzed biomolecule samples with different concentrations and demonstrated that the solution's impedance is highly correlated with the concentration, indicating that it may be possible to use this sensor as a concentration sensor. In contrast with standard spectrophotometers, this sensor offers a low-cost and purely electrical solution for the quantitative analysis of biomolecule solutions. In addition to determining concentrations, we found that the sample solution impedance is highly correlated with the length of the DNA fragments, indicating that the sizes of PCR products could be validated with an integrated chip-based, sample-friendly system within a few minutes. The system could be the basis of a rapid, low-cost platform for DNA characterization with broad applications in cancer and genetic disease research.