Single-Molecule Detection of Proteins Using Aptamer-Functionalized Molecular Electronic Devices

摘要

Establishing a practical platform for directly detecting the activities of Biological and chemical species at the single-molecule level is one of the ultimate goals in both the scientific and industrial communities for a wide variety of applications, including environmental monitoring, industrial quality control, and clinical diagnostics.Several label-based or label-free techniques have been demonstrated to achieve the reliable detection of proteins, including the enzymelinked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), surface plasmon resonance (SPR), electrochemistry, scanning probe microscopy (SPM), impedance spectroscopy and assays with enhanced sensitivity employing nanoparticles, microcantilevers, carbon nanotubes, and nanowires. However, some of the detection approaches developed so far are not suitable for real-time detection and/or kinetic analysis; some suffer from overly sophisticated technical requirements; and others lack high sensitivity and selectivity. An optimized strategy would create an integrated system that can combine rapid real-time measurements with sensitivity, selectivity, and reversibility, and would be able to monitor individual binding events.