Parallel Optical and Electrochemical DNA Detection

Abstract

This contribution introduces strategies for the sensitive detection of oligonucleotides as bio-analytes binding from solution to a variety of probe architectures assembled at the (Au-) sensor surface. Detection principles based on surface plasmon optics and electrochemical techniques are compared. In particular, cyclic- and square wave voltammetry (SWV) are applied for the read-out of ferrocene redox labels conjugated to streptavidin that binds to the (biotinylated) DNA targets after hybridizing to the interfacial probe matrix of either DNA or peptide nucleic acid (PNA) strands. By employing streptavidin modified with fluorophores the identical sensor architecture can be used for the recording of hybridization reactions by surface plasmon fluorescence spectroscopy (SPFS). The Langmuir isotherms determined by both techniques, i.e., by SWV and SPFS, give virtually identical affinity constants KA, confirming that the mode of detection has no influence on the hybridization reaction. By using semiconducting nanoparticles as luminescence labels that can be tuned in their bandgap energies over a wide range of emission wavelengths surface plasmon fluorescence microscopy allows for the parallel read-out of multiple analyte binding events simultaneously.