A Low Noise Ion Channel Amplifier in a USB Pen Drive

Abstract

Ion channels are transmembrane proteins responsible of ion exchange between intra- and extra-cellular environments. Ion channel play an essential role in many biological processes and their malfunctions are involved in several diseases or severe pathologies. As a result, ion channels are targets of numerous pharmaceutical compounds.The capability of ion channels to respond to different chemical-physical stimuli has inspired the design of hybrid sensors, where they are adopted as sensing units. This approach has already been employed for the detection of molecules in solution and for DNA sequencing.Both for biology and electronics extents, it is crucial to characterize ion channel electrical behavior with high accuracy and precision. This is achieved using low-noise acquisition equipments able to amplify ion channel picoamps-range currents.Commercially amplifiers for ion channel recording are bulky instrumentations and are limited in the number of channel simultaneously acquired due to their discrete-architecture electronic limitations. To overcome this weaknesses a single-microchip (integrated circuitry-based) amplifiers have been presented. Unfortunately they suffer from shortcomings like system integration, data elaboration and digital interface, resulting in unsettled systems.We developed an innovative low-noise technology for ion channel acquisition microchips that allow us to shrink in few squared millimeters the acquisition system improving the performances usually obtained with bulky instruments.We present our new technology integrated into a microchip and embedded into a USB pen ready to use. The fully comprehensive system includes the amplifier, the data elaboration, the digital interface and the data link.Furthermore, our technology allows us to configure the system for single or multi-channel acquisition, addressing the needs of emerging microfluidic techniques. Moreover, it offers an extremely flexible input interface and a user programmable stimulus, allowing different setups for different low-noise acquisition needs in different applications.