Signal Amplification for Highly Sensitive Bioanalysis Based on Biosensors or Biochips

As the development of life science and biomedical science, the detection of biomolecules with low abundance and the acquisition of ultra weak biological signals have been become a bottleneck of these fields. Therefore, developing high sensitive analytical methods coupling with the specificity of biological recognition evens is in urgent need [1]. However, owing to the inherent background signals of various instrumental analytical technologies and the limitation of the classical analytical methodologies, improving the sensitivities via traditional physical methods or simple chemical and biocatalytic processes is far from meeting the practical demands. The progress in nanotechnology and biotechnology set a convenient and promising way to develop novel analytical methods with high sensitivity. Recently, as a result, a series of novel signal amplification strategies have been designed based on nano and molecular biological methods [2]. By combining these strategies with biosensors and biochips, many practical bioanalytical methods and biosensing technologies have been proposed. The principles, techniques and applications in bioanalysis of these novel strategies are described as follows.