Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 4
Gold Nanoparticle-Based
Electrochemical DNA Biosensors
Mar´ıa Pedrero, Paloma Yanez-Sedeno,andJos´eM.Pingarron
Departamento de Quımica Analıtica, Facultad de Ciencias Quımicas,
Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Avenida Complutense s/n, E-28040 Madrid, Spain
pingarro@quim.ucm.es
Nowadays, gold nanoparticles play a key role in the construction of
a new generation of biosensors and, in particular, electrochemical
biosensors. This chapter is devoted to electrochemical DNA biosen-
sors coupled with the use of gold nanoparticles to improve both
oligonucleotide immobilization on electrode surfaces and signal
amplification for sensitive detection of hybridization events. Recent
advances in the development of these biosensors are covered,
stressing on the improvement of the analytical performance.
ConfigurationsusedforDNAimmobilizationandsignaltransduction
and amplification strategies are treated separately.
4.1 Introduction
The use of nanomaterials for the construction of e
cient and
powerful biosensing devices constitutes nowadays one of the
research lines with more activity and effort in modern bioanalytical
