Novel Electronic Sensor for Accurate and Cost-Efficient Testing of DNA for Disease Diagnosis

A novel electronic sensor array for the rapid, accurate and cost-efficient testing of DNA for disease diagnosis has been designed by A*STAR researchers.

“Our nanogap sensor array can unambiguously detect the concentration of DNA quantitatively and may obviate the need for target amplification used in current DNA tests,” says team leader Zhiqiang Gao of the A*STAR Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, Singapore.

Current clinical methods for DNA detection use a technique called the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to amplify the target DNA sequence enough for it to be detected—an expensive and time-intensive process. A number of different research teams have recently examined the use of ultrasensitive ‘nanogap sensor arrays’ to avoid the use of PCR, but are yet to resolve problems such as low detection limits, unreliable results and background noise.

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