Speaker
Trey Pittman
Speaker's Institution
Colorado State University
Date
2021-10-20
Time
4:00 PM
Location
Chemistry A101
Mixer Time
3:45 PM
Mixer Time
Chemistry B101E
Calendar (ICS) Event
Additional Information

Literature Seminar:

Point-of-care testing (POCT) is crucial for rapid detection of analytes for non-communicable and communicable diseases because it allows for better disease management and treatment.  Established lab-based techniques for quantification of desired analytes are time and resource expensive. Electrochemical biosensors are a rapid and cheap alternative while maintaining sensitivity and selectivity in numerous biological fluids. Currently, antibodies are the most common biological sensing element applied in affinity-based electrochemical biosensors, but the use of aptamers –single stranded oligonucleotides– in biorecognition appears to be a growing trend due to superior stability, selectivity, and sensitivity. This growth can also be attributed to the introduction of SELEX (Systematic Evolution of Ligands by EXponential enrichment), a method used to obtain more specific aptamers for different target molecules.  In an electrochemical aptamer-based (EAB) sensor, the aptamer is anchored to the electrode at one terminus, and a redox reporter is attached to other terminus. The presence of target creates binding-induced conformational change of the aptamer, thus changing the measurable electrochemical signal. Through voltammetry techniques, one can measure the change of electron transfer rate that occurs between the attached redox reporter and the interrogating electrode surface in target bound and unbound states. The signal change percentage is plotted against target concentration allowing for quantification of analyte concentration in a sample. The implementation of EAB sensors can allow for the rapid and cheap detection of target analytes for POCT.