Electrical wiring of polynucleotides for nanoelectronic applications
AssigneeUniversity of Southern California
InventorsNickolas Chelyapov, Mohamed Y. El-Naggar
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Abstract
The present invention relates to incorporation and patterning of polynucleotide molecular wires onto surfaces. In one embodiment, two or more thiol-modified polynucleotide anchors are separately attached to metal contacts that are in turn separately attached to a substrate. Each polynucleotide anchor contains an unpaired region of bases that when bound to complimentary regions of a polynucleotide bridge molecule allow for electrical communication between contacts, and therefore detection of the polynucleotide bridge.
Claims31
A system, comprising:
- a substrate;
- a first contact attached to the substrate;
- a second contact attached to the substrate;
- a first polynucleotide attached to the first contact and having a binding region;
- a second polynucleotide attached to the second contact and having a binding region;
- and
- a bridging polynucleotide having a first binding region attached to the binding region of the first polynucleotide and a second binding region attached to the binding region of the second polynucleotide.
A device, comprising:
- a substrate;
- a first contact attached to the substrate;
- a second contact attached to the substrate;
- a first polynucleotide attached to the first contact and having a binding region;
- and
- a second polynucleotide attached to the second contact and having a binding region.
A method for detecting polynucleotide sequences, comprising:
- providing a device, comprising:
- a substrate,
- a first contact attached to the substrate,
- a second contact attached to the substrate,
- a first polynucleotide attached to the first contact and having a binding region, and
- a second polynucleotide attached to the second contact and having a binding region;
- contacting the device with one or more polynucleotide sequences, each with a first and second region of one or more unpaired bases;
- introducing an electrical current to the device;
- and
- testing for conduction of the electrical current between the first and second contacts,
- wherein electrical conduction detected between the first and second contacts indicates hybridization of one of the one or more polynucleotide sequences to each of the first and second polynucleotides, and a lack of electrical conduction detected between the first and second contacts indicates a lack of hybridization of a polynucleotide sequence to each of the first and second polynucleotides.
A method for determining single molecule kinetics, comprising:
- providing a wiring system comprising:
- a substrate,
- a first electrode attached to the substrate,
- a second electrode attached to the substrate, and
- a polynucleotide attached to the first electrode;
- applying a positive bias to the second electrode;
- and
- monitoring the time elapsed between applying the positive bias to the second electrode and the attachment of the polynucleotide to the second electrode to determine single molecule kinetics.
A method for determining and analyzing the electrical properties of a polynucleotide sequences, comprising:
- providing a device, comprising:
- a substrate,
- a first contact attached to the substrate,
- a second contact attached to the substrate,
- a first polynucleotide attached to the first contact and having a binding region, and
- a second polynucleotide attached to the second contact and having a binding region;
- contacting the device with a bridging polynucleotide sequence that hybridizes to the binding regions of each of the first and second polynucleotides;
- and
- introducing an electrical current to the device;
- and
- measuring the electrical properties of the bridging polynucleotide using a device selected from the group consisting of:
- semiconductor parameter analyzers, voltmeters, ammeters, pulse generators, potentiostats, galvanostats, function generators and combinations thereof, and wherein the measured electrical properties are selected from the group consisting of:
- conductance, capacitance, inductance and combinations thereof.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.