Biosensors for efficient capture of biological information • Current technology relies on inefficient systems for capture of biological information: – Information encoded in the DNA/RNA of microbes for infectious disease diagnosis – Information encoded in chemical structures of metabolites/drugs in clinical laboratory diagnosis of metabolic disease.
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Biosensors for efficient capture of biological information Current technology relies on inefficient systems for capture of biological information: –Information.
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Biosensors for efficient capture of biological information
• Current technology relies on inefficient systems for capture of biological information:– Information encoded in the
DNA/RNA of microbes for infectious disease diagnosis
– Information encoded in chemical structures of metabolites/drugs in clinical laboratory diagnosis of metabolic disease.
DIG-ELISA PCR for diagnosis of meningococcal meningitis
substrate
product
SIGNAL
Newcombe, J., et al J.Clin.Microbiol. 34, 1637-1640.
• SBLS has FACSCAN (Becton Dickenson) and FACSCalibur (BeckmanCoulter)
• Flow cytometry widely used to measure fluorescent intensity and proportion of target cells in cell population, particularly immune cells
Quantum Dots• fluoresce with a narrow and symmetric
emission spectrum that depends directly on the size of the crystal.
• can be fine-tuned to emit light at a variety of wavelengths simply by altering the size of the core
• constitute a set of multicoloured molecular beacons (up to 40,000 colours) for use in imaging
• Soluble quantum dots injected into frog embryos – only distributed to the offspring of the injected parent cell, and did not diffuse out of the cell used to track cell lineages.
• Can be tagged with antibody or DNA probes
Possible use of quantum dots?
• DNA fingerprinting with multiple allele-specific probes
• Widely used in forensic science, genetic typing and infectious disease diagnosis
2 Photon Microscopy• In confocal microscopy the
exciting laser must be very bright to allow an adequate signal-to-noise ratio.– photobleaching– Phototoxicity
• In 2 photon microscopy the signal is generated by two lower-energy (infrared) photons that are absorbed contemporaneously (within 1 femtosecond). – More focussed beam– Less toxicity
Biophotonics in SBLS• Dr George Kass (Toxicology)• Dr Nick Toms (Pharmacology)• Professor Ian Kitchen (Pharmacology)• Dr Lesley-Jane Reynolds (Microbiology)