Ultrasensitive visual read-out of nucleic acids using electrocatalytic fluid displacement

Justin D. Besant, Jagotamoy Das, Ian B. Burgess, Wenhan Liu, Edward H. Sargent () and Shana O. Kelley ()
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Justin D. Besant: Institute for Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, University of Toronto
Jagotamoy Das: Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto
Ian B. Burgess: Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto
Wenhan Liu: Institute for Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, University of Toronto
Edward H. Sargent: Faculty of Engineering, University of Toronto
Shana O. Kelley: Institute for Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, University of Toronto

Nature Communications, 2015, vol. 6, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Diagnosis of disease outside of sophisticated laboratories urgently requires low-cost, user-friendly devices. Disposable, instrument-free testing devices are used for home and physician office testing, but are limited in applicability to a small class of highly abundant analytes. Direct, unambiguous visual read-out is an ideal way to deliver a result on a disposable device; however, existing strategies that deliver appropriate sensitivity produce only subtle colour changes. Here we report a new approach, which we term electrocatalytic fluid displacement, where a molecular binding event is transduced into an electrochemical current, which drives the electrodeposition of a metal catalyst. The catalyst promotes bubble formation that displaces a fluid to reveal a high contrast change. We couple the read-out system to a nanostructured microelectrode and demonstrate direct visual detection of 100 fM DNA in 10 min. This represents the lowest limit of detection of nucleic acids reported using high contrast visual read-out.

Date: 2015
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DOI: 10.1038/ncomms7978

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