Optical biosensing of human immunodeficiency virus on a gold coated surface

Abstract

Optical biosensors are compact analytical tools that have a biorecognition element combined with a transducer system, which emits an optical signal that is directly proportional to the analyte concentration. Biorecognition elements are generally biological materials such as tissues, cells, nucleic acids, antigens, antibodies, and enzymes. Optical biosensors utilize the interaction of optical fields with the analyte for optical detections. They offer some advantages over conventional analytical methods due to their fast detection abilities, high sensitivity, real time analysis, specificity, portability, and cost effectiveness. These properties capacitate optical biosensors to perform efficiently in fields like clinical diagnostics and healthcare, environmental analysis and monitoring as well as biotechnological industry. There are many configurations of optical biosensors that have been invented, which are surface plasmon resonance based (SPR), optical waveguide based, and optical resonator based. In the current study, a home-built surface plasmon resonance based optical biosensor was used to detect the presence of HIV on a gold coated surface. The results showed that the virus was detected after binding to the antibody on the surface of the gold coated slide as demonstrated by the change in transmittance intensity between the sample that had the virus and the one with no virus. These outcomes and those obtained in the previous studies in our lab will lead to the development of a multiplex optical biosensing device for the detection of HIV, HIV viral load testing as well as the detection of HIV drug resistance mutations in any given sample.