An Integrated Lab-on-a-Transistor for Biological Detection

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The crisis in the management of infectious disease for the developed world and in the developing world (global health arena) requires rapid, easy to use, integrated, and inexpensive diagnostic devices for the detection of agents of infectious diseases, i.e. bacteria, viruses. In this application, the development of a ?Lab-on-a-Transistor? is proposed for cell capture and thermal lysing, and ultra rapid techniques for performing nucleic acid amplification on silicon transistors with a direct, rapid electrical detection of the amplified products. The grand challenge of making nucleic acid amplification truly a point-of-care test will be addressed, where the results can be obtained with high accuracy and reliability in less than 5 minutes on a silicon sensor array. To address these challenges, the bacteria Listeria monocytogenes will be used as the model system within the three years of this proposed grant but the technology platform can be applied to other pathogenic microorganisms as well. Intellectual Merit: The proposed concept of developing a ?Lab-on-a-Transistor? has the following intellectual merit; (a) concentrating single bacteria on individual field effect transistors with in a linear array using dielectrophoresis within a microfluidic channel. Then ultra-localized heating on the surface of the field effect sensor using an ac voltage will be explored. Using this method, thermal lysing of bacteria that are attached on the surface of the transistors will be performed by achieving temperatures of 95oC or higher, (b) the same sensor would be used as a heater to perform nucleic acid amplification reactions using either a polymerase chain reaction or a rolling circuit amplification method, and (c) exploring the use of the transistors themselves for label free electrical detection of the PCR products. Broad Impact: The proposed work will have a broad impact in the area of silicon based biosensors and the proposed technology could provide significant advances in developing point of care sensors. Graduate students will be involved in summer lecture and hands-on workshops to be held at the Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory at the University of Illinois. REU summer support will be requested for hiring additional undergraduates to work with the graduate students on the research project during the summer, which will also help to develop a pipeline of graduate student researchers for the future.