Lick the virus
Scientists have developed an "electronic language" sensitive to viruses
RNF Press Service
Russian scientists have developed a bio-identifying layer that will detect pathogens in various liquids, including biological and drinking water. The biosensor consists of an organic electronic component, on which a bio-recognition layer is additionally applied. The proposed device is simple and compact, in addition, it can be manufactured using printing technologies. The results of the work supported by a grant from the Russian Science Foundation (RNF) are published in the journal ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces (Poimanova et al., Biorecognition Layer Based On Biotin-Containing [1]Benzothieno[3,2-b][1]benzothiophene Derivative for Biosensing by Electrolyte-Gated Organic Field-Effect Transistors).
Mobile sensor technologies are of particular importance for medical diagnostics, monitoring and health maintenance: they are compact and can timely warn about the pathology that has arisen in the body, prevent the risk of certain complications and diseases in the patient, allow for diagnosis in community-based conditions.
In modern medical practice, electronic or optical/quantum sensors are increasingly used, for example, quantum magnetometers and sensors to study brain function or early diagnosis of cancer. They are placed on the patient's body, and the obtained parameters are processed on a smartphone or computer. In outpatient or out-of-hospital conditions, convenient sensors are required that will quickly help with the provision of medical care. In this case, biosensors — devices based on a sensitive element having a biological nature - have an advantage. They do not require special working conditions, have high sensitivity and responsiveness, and are also able to detect completely different molecules.
Scientists from the N. S. Enikolopov Institute of Synthetic Polymer Materials of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow), the N. D. Zelinsky Institute of Organic Chemistry of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow) and Lomonosov Moscow State University (Moscow) have developed a bio-recognition layer for an electronic language class device that detects different types of pathogens in biological fluids, for example in the blood.
As the basis of the "electronic language", the authors took a substrate with a set of pixels, each of which is an organic electrolytic transistor. On each pixel, scientists applied special molecules — streptavidin and DNA aptamers (short nucleotide sequences with a certain structure), and they interacted with specific pathogen molecules.
The scientists tested the device's operability by applying a drop of liquid to its surface and removing an electrical signal from all pixels: if the pixel response differed from the control values, this meant that the corresponding pathogen was present in the liquid.
To test the dependence of the electrical properties of the recognition layer on the structure of the molecules that are deposited on the pixels, chemists used a compound based on specially designed and synthesized molecules. These are the so-called biotin anchors: they act as receptors on the surface of semiconductors and retain their properties when they enter biological fluids. A device with such a layer was placed in a buffer solution in which it worked stably, which indicates the potential for detecting antigens in biological media.
The authors confirmed the effectiveness of the biosensor platform by using it to determine the influenza A virus. During the tests, scientists received a good response to the influenza A (H7N1) virus with a concentration of 3×10 9 The specificity of its determination was also shown by control experiments with a nonspecific virus of Newcastle disease affecting birds. It was possible to provide the required specificity due to a competently designed sensor architecture.
"Based on the "electronic language", we plan to get a miniature device (the size of one and the thickness of two smartphones), with autonomous battery power and a set of disposable touch pads. It will allow you to quickly conduct a preliminary analysis for the presence of pathogens, for example, in drinking water, even for a person who does not have a special education," says one of the authors of the work Elena Poymanova, Candidate of Chemical Sciences, researcher at the Institute of Synthetic Polymer Materials named after N. S. Enikolopov of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
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