Nanotechnology for Life Sciences

摘要

Nanotechnology is driving a real revolution in the field of Life Sciences. If going from macro to micro results in a simple scaling down of sizes, the transition from micro to nano offers tools with novel functionalities made possible by the new physical phenomena that can be exploited at this scale. The potential of "nano" is disrupting when it meets "Fluidics": the ability of manipulating fluids and particles at nanometric level provides innovative technologies to Life Sciences. In fact, at present, nanofluidic devices are universally considered tools of choice for biomedical challenges as next-generation sequencing, single-molecule manipulation and high sensitivity biosensing. The basic structures of nanofluidic systems are nanopores, nanochannels and nanopillars which have been widespread used for many biomedical and bioanalytical applications. The fields where these devices are showing their highest potential, offering performance far beyond conventional techniques, are DNA molecule analysis, processing and sorting. The interest that these devices are gathering from the scientific community is further increased by the possibility of using, for their fabrication, low cost materials, like polymers, and simple techniques, like Soft-Lithography. Thus, in the future they will be essential tools for any laboratory operating in Molecular Biology, Genomics, Proteomics and Biomedicine, in general. This review addresses both most common fabrication strategies and applications of nanofluidic devices for Life Sciences.