Abstract
The discovery of semiconducting behavior of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) has resulted in a large number of literatures in the study of DNA electronics. Sequence-specific electronic response provides a platform towards understanding charge transfer mechanism and therefore the electronic properties of DNA. It is possible to utilize these characteristic properties to identify/detect DNA. In this current work, we demonstrate a novel method of DNA-based identification of basidiomycetes using current-voltage (I-V) profiles obtained from DNA-specific Schottky barrier diodes. Electronic properties such as ideality factor, barrier height, shunt resistance, series resistance, turn-on voltage, knee-voltage, breakdown voltage and breakdown current were calculated and used to quantify the identification process as compared to morphological and molecular characterization techniques. The use of these techniques is necessary in order to study biodiversity, but sometimes it can be misleading and unreliable and is not sufficiently useful for the identification of fungi genera. Many of these methods have failed when it comes to identification of closely related species of certain genus like Pleurotus. Our electronics profiles, both in the negative and positive bias regions were however found to be highly characteristic according to the base-pair sequences. We believe that this simple, low-cost and practical method could be useful towards identifying and detecting DNA in biotechnology and pathology.
Highlights
Watson and Crick conceived the double helix structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) in 19531 using X-ray diffraction patterns obtained by Franklin Rosalind and Maurice Wilkins[2]
This known aspect of DNA’s semiconductive behaviour as a Schottky junction and its characteristic identification of basidiomycetes using current-voltage (I-V) profile in complement with a metal contact is the basis for our own application in DNA detection and identification
A band of close yet distinguishable profiles was observed for the mushroom specimens of the same genus in both positive (Fig. 1) and negative (Fig. 2) regions. This demonstrates the potential to utilize the I-V profiles to fingerprint and characterize the different species and genus. Both the figures allows for measurement of various solid-state parameters for in-depth characterization of each type of DNA based on its base pair sequence electronics
Summary
Watson and Crick conceived the double helix structure of DNA in 19531 using X-ray diffraction patterns obtained by Franklin Rosalind and Maurice Wilkins[2]. We utilized the properties of the DNA-Aluminium (Al) Schottky junction to respond variably in a highly characteristic manner in both the positive and negative bias regions towards different base sequences. These characteristic behaviors could be utilized in various applications especially in taxonomy, which is essential to biological science and is the basis of information exchange. To illuminate the taxonomic position of species in the genus Pleurotus (earlier determined mainly by morphological features), many researchers started to classify these fungi by molecular techniques[22]. Our current method involve acquiring electronic signature signals from semiconducting DNA molecules from different species of a closely related mushroom genus King Oyster: Pleurotus eryngii (KLU-M 1380 ), White Oyster: Pleurotus floridanus (KLU-M 1382), Gray Oyster: Pleurotus pulmonarius (KLU-M 1384), Seri Pagi: Pleurotus giganteus (KLU-M 1227), Wild Pleurotus giganteus: Pleurotus giganteus (KLU-M 1385), Abalone mushroom: Pleurotus cystidiosus (KLU-M 1388) and two control species from different genus Shiitake: Lentinula edodes (KLU-M 1386), Enoki: Flammulina velutipes (KLU-M 1387)
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