Recent advances in fiber-optic DNA biosensors

Fiber-optic DNA biosensors are a kind of analytic setups, which convert the Waston-Crick base pairs matching duplex or Hoogsteen’s triplex (T/A-T, C/G-C) formation into a readable analytical signals when functionalized singlestrands DNA (ssDNA) or double-strands DNA (dsDNA) of interest are immobilized on the surface of fiber-optic hybrids with target DNA or interacts with ligands. This review will provide the information about the fiber-optic DNA biosensors classified into two categories depending on the end fiber and side fiber with or without the labels—label-free fiber-optic DNA biosensors and labeled fiber-optic DNA biosensor in recent years. Both are dissertated, and emphasis is on the label-free fiber-optic DNA biosensors. Fiber-optic DNA biosensors had got great progresses because fiber-optic has more advantages over the other transducers and are easily processed by nanotechnology. So fiberoptic DNA biosensors have increasingly attracted more attention to research and develop the new fiber-optic DNA biosensors that integrated with the “nano-bio-info” technology for in vivo test, single molecular detection and on-line medical diagnosis. Finally, future prospects to the fiber-optic DNA biosensors are predicted.