Thrombin Assessment on Nanostructured Label-Free Aptamer-Based Sensors: A Mapping Investigation via Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy.

Thrombin Assessment on Nanostructured Label-Free Aptamer-Based Sensors: A Mapping Investigation via Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy. Biomed Res Int. 2018;2018:5293672 Authors: Scatena E, Pascale S, Cairone C, Fabbri F, Del Gaudio C Abstract Aptamers, synthetic single-stranded DNA or RNA molecules, can be regarded as a valuable improvement to develop novel ad hoc sensors to diagnose several clinical pathologies. Their intrinsic potential is related to the high specificity and sensitivity to the selected target biomarkers, being capable of detecting very low concentrations and thus allowing an early diagnosis of a possible disease. This kind of probe can be usefully integrated into a number of different devices in order to provide a reliable acquisition of the analyte and properly elaborate the related signal. The study presents the fabrication and characterization of a label-free aptamer sensor designed using a gold-coated silicon nanostructured substrate to map the target molecule by means of surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). As a proof, thrombin was used as a model at four different concentrations (i.e., 0.0873, 0.873, 8.73, and 87.3 nM). SERS mapping analysis was carried out considering each representative band of the aptamer-thrombin complex (centered at 822, 1140, and 1558 cm-1) and then combining them in order to acquire a comprehensive and unambiguous measure of the target. In both cases, a valuable correlatio...
Source: Biomed Res - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Biomed Res Int Source Type: research