Synthesis of Ferrocenyl Deoxyribonucleic Acids(DNAs)and Their Application to Electrochemical Gene Detection

摘要

Human genome sequencing project and DNA microarray analysis yielded a number of useful results.These are included in an insight into genes possibly associated with diseases and individual's susceptibility to side effects of drugs arising from single nucleotide polymorphisms.For further development of these areas,a simple and convenient analytical means for gene analysis is keenly desired.Among many gene detecting techniques,one that uses an electrochemical method is especially promising from a viewpoint of convenient means with compactification and miniaturization.Ferrocence is a reversible redox active molecule and relatively stable in aqueous solution.Therefore nucleic acids modified with it can be used as an electrochemically active DNA probe.Several modification methods of nucleic acids with ferrocene and electrochemical gene detection methods based on the modified nucleic acids have been studied in this context.Especially,the sensitivity of detection could be improved by the introduction of many ferrocenes in a single DNA probe or by the use of ferrocene as a mediator of enzymatic amplification reaction in the electrochemical gene detecting system.In this article,synthetic methods of ferrocenyl nucleic acids and electrochemical gene detecting methods using their derivatives are summarized.The results described here may lead to an essential technique which enables the development of a DNA analyzer of the next generation.