Application of Magnetic and Luminescent Metal Oxide Particles to Biosensors

摘要

Nanotechnology-based platforms for high-throughput, multiplexed detection of proteins and DNA promise to bring substantial advances in molecular medicine, environmental monitoring and security against terrorist attack. It is possible to replace current chip-based microarray technologies with nanoparticle-based technologies by shifting the immobilizing probe DNA or antibody from the surface of a chip to the surface of a nanoparticle. By incorporating magnetic properties and luminescent properties into the same particle, it is possible to manipulate these materials within tailored magnetic fields, and to achieve sensitive read-out by making use of the non-photobleaching properties of the base lanthanide particle. It is possible to synthesize a large range of uniquely encoded particles using a spray pyrolysis technique that has been perfected in our laboratory, with much greater ease than is offered by embedding quantum dots in polymer beads. In particular, we make use of the unique properties of lanthanide phosphors doped into suitable crystal hosts to synthesize particles with a wide range of ratios of different phosphor signals that encode for unique probe oligonucleotides or antibody probes.