Threading Intercalators as Redox Indicators

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on the method based on an electrochemically active ligand as an electrochemical hybridization indicator because of its ease and quickness. It summarizes the electrochemical gene detection based on ferrocenylnaphthalene diimide or threading intercalator derivatives. This ligand showed a high preference for double stranded deoxyribonucleic acid (dsDNA) with special stabilization of its complex by threading-type intercalation. Ferrocenylnaphthalene diimide can be used for electrochemical gene detection and furthermore, this method can be applied as the new single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) detection by taking advantage of a decrease in the amount of the ligand bound to a mismatched DNA duplex region. This can be extended to error-free diagnostic chips coupled with the simultaneous multiple mutation detection- electrochemical array (SMMD-ECA) chip method. Electrochemical gene detection based on the electrochemical hybridization indicator is more suited for a practical gene-detecting chip than that based on an electrochemical DNA probe because of its large and stable current response.