MAGNETIC DISK ARRAY DNA ANALYZER

该项目的具体目标是开发磁盘阵列（MDA）技术，用于癌症研究和诊断的超灵敏和廉价的分子分析。第一阶段的主要目标是开发和完成一个实验室MDA设备，引入一种通过磁性颗粒标记生物分子的技术，并展示MDA的快速可靠的DNA检测。我们提出的方法是利用一种新的方法来制备和检测由DNA分子结合到磁盘表面的磁性簇，这是非常类似于传统的计算机磁盘。利用这种方法，可以通过监测表面的磁性来确定磁性标记的DNA的空间位置，然后可以按照与最近由DNA芯片技术引入的相同的方法来识别DNA序列。在第一阶段，具体目标是（1）系统地研究用于磁盘阵列的磁标记材料（2）开发MDA设备并评估磁盘阅读设备的性能。（3）证明MDA用于监测DNA杂交而不需要扩增靶DNA。拟议的商业应用：MDA的潜在商业应用包括癌症的突变筛查和医院的遗传疾病诊断。由于快速分析，它是非常有价值的生物医学研究。它也可用于法医应用的DNA指纹图谱以及生物武器分析领域的快速微生物DNA分析。

The specific aim of this project is to develop Magnetic Disk Array (MDA) technology for ultra-sensitive and inexpensive molecular analysis for cancer research and diagnosis. The major goals of Phase I are to develop and complete a laboratory MDA device, to introduce a technique for tagging biomolecules by magnetic particles, and to demonstrate rapid and reliable DNA detection with the MDA. The approach we propose is to utilize a new method for preparing and detecting magnetic clusters bonded by a DNA molecule to the surface of a disk which is very similar to a conventional computer diskette. With this approach spacial location of a magnetically tagged DNA can be determined by monitoring magnetic properties of the surface and then can be used to identify the DNA sequence following the same approach as was recently introduced by DNA-on-chip technologies. During Phase I, the specific aims are (1) to systematically investigate magnetic tagging materials to be used for the Magnetic Disk Array (2) To develop the MDA device and evaluate the performance of magnetic disk reading equipment. Special effort will be made to achieve ultra-sensitive DNA detection (3) To demonstrate the use of MDA for monitoring DNA hybridization without the need of amplification of targets DNA. PROPOSED COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS: The potential commercial applications of MDA include mutation screening for cancer and genetic disease diagnosis for hospitals. Due to fast speed analysis, it is very valuable for biomedical research. It also can be used for DNA fingerprinting for forensic applications as well as rapid microbial DNA analysis in field for biological weapon analysis.