Bio Focus: High performing assay using antibody-conjugated DNA nanoswitches detects proteins

Programmable pH-triggered DNA nanoswitches.

We have designed programmable DNA-based nanoswitches whose closing/opening can be triggered over specific different pH windows. These nanoswitches form an intramolecular triplex DNA structure through pH-sensitive parallel Hoogsteen interactions. We demonstrate that by simply changing the relative content of TAT/CGC triplets in the switches, we can rationally tune their pH dependence over more t...

Optomagnetic detection of DNA nanoswitches

Performing DNA Comparison on a Bio-Inspired Tissue of FPGAs

String comparison is a critical issue in many application domains, including speech recognition, contents search, and bioinformatics. The similarity between two strings of lengths N and M can be computed in O(N × M) steps by means of a dynamic programming algorithm developed by Needleman and Wunsh. The algorithm can be effectively mapped onto a systolic array, resulting in a parallel implementa...

Positional photocleavage control of DNA-based nanoswitches.

DNA-based switches are currently operated by manual solution-phase addition of 'set-strands'. We demonstrate another operation method-sterically inaccessible 'set-strands', released from a surface into solution by spatially controlled photocleavage. This technique will enable microarrays of set-strands to operate many DNA-based switches in self-contained computational and diagnostic devices.

Fluoroimmunoassays using antibody-conjugated quantum dots.

Luminescent colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals (quantum dots) are robust inorganic fluoro phores that have the potential to circumvent some of the functional limitations encountered by organic dyes in sensing and biotechnological applications. Quantum dots exhibit size-dependent tunable, narrow fluorescence emission spectra that span the visible spectrum and have broad absorption spectra. Thi...