Gene Detection in Complex Biological Media Using Semiconductor
Nanorods within an Integrated Microfluidic Device
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Abstract
The salient optical properties of
highly luminescent semiconductor
nanocrystals render them ideal fluorophores for clinical diagnostics,
therapeutics, and highly sensitive biochip applications. Microfluidic
systems allow miniaturization and integration of multiple biochemical
processes in a single device and do not require sophisticated diagnostic
tools. Herein, we describe a microfluidic system that integrates RNA
extraction, reverse transcription to cDNA, amplification and detection
within one integrated device to detect histidine decarboxylase (HDC)
gene directly from human white blood cells samples. When anisotropic
semiconductor nanorods (NRs) were used as the fluorescent probes,
the detection limit was found to be 0.4 ng of total RNA, which was
much lower than that obtained using spherical quantum dots (QDs) or
organic dyes. This was attributed to the large action cross-section
of NRs and their high probability of target capture in a pull-down
detection scheme. The combination of large scale integrated microfluidics
with highly fluorescent semiconductor NRs may find widespread utility
in point-of-care devices and multitarget diagnostics