{"id":286352,"date":"2017-12-07T09:47:52","date_gmt":"2017-12-07T14:47:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=286352"},"modified":"2020-05-07T12:08:48","modified_gmt":"2020-05-07T16:08:48","slug":"nanofilter-improved-dna-detector-286352","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/nanofilter-improved-dna-detector-286352\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientist’s accidental exhale leads to improved DNA detector"},"content":{"rendered":"

Greg Madejski held his breath as he looked into the microscope, trying to weld two fingernail-sized chips together: a tiny chip containing a nanofilter on top of another chip with a DNA sensor.<\/p>\n

It was frustrating work. The chips weren\u2019t making good contact with each other. Madejski gently poked at the chips, then peered over the top of the microscope.<\/p>\n

And exhaled.<\/p>\n

The sudden waft of warm air swept over the nanofilter, transferring it to the sensor\u2014right on target. The \u201caccident\u201d led Madejski to an important insight: the water vapor in his breath had\u00a0condensed on the device, causing\u00a0the nanofilter to adhere ever so neatly to the sensor.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was like a really high-tech temporary tattoo that I created by accident; lick and stick!\u201d says the PhD student in the lab of James McGrath,<\/a> a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Rochester.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s how water vapor became integral to the development and design of a novel device for detecting DNA biomarkers affiliated with disease. Created by McGrath\u2019s lab in collaboration with Professor Vincent Tabard-Cossa and graduate student Kyle Briggs at the University of Ottawa, the device is described in an article published online at Nano Letters<\/em><\/a>. The article, and an image from Madejski\u2019s homemade animation of the device in operation, will be highlighted on the cover of the February 2018 print issue.<\/p>\n

\"animated
This animation shows, as graduate student Greg Madejski explains, the \u201cthin films of water, seen as rainbow colors, swelling and shrinking the space between the prefilter and the nanopore as its exposed to additional water vapor.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u2018A remarkable structure\u2019<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The device is comprised of three ultrathin layers:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • a nanoporous silicon nitride membrane which serves as a prefilter.<\/li>\n
  • a biosensor membrane with a single nanopore.<\/li>\n
  • a spacer layer that separates these by only 200 nm.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    The arrangement creates a nanocavity filled with less than a femtoliter of fluid\u2014or about a million times smaller than the smallest raindrops.<\/p>\n

    During operation, the device uses an electric field to lure a strand of DNA to enter one of the pores of the prefilter and then pass through the nanocavity to reach the pore of the underlying sensor membrane. This triggers changes in the device\u2019s electrical current that can be detected and analyzed. The fact that DNA must elongate itself in a consistent way to pass through the two-membrane combination improves the precision and reproducibility of detection.<\/p>\n

    \u201cThis is a remarkable structure,\u201d says McGrath. \u201cWe\u2019ve built an integrated system with a highly porous filter within molecular reach of a sensor. I think there are many sensors, particularly those that hunt for biomarkers in raw biological fluids, that would benefit from filtering away unwanted molecules immediately upstream of the detector.\u201d<\/p>\n

    The method of fabrication instantly wets the nanocavity, which is often difficult at the nanoscale. The device contains dozens of these nanocavities, which may eventually increase the amount of material that can be screened by enabling parallelized biomarker detection.<\/p>\n

    Solving problems that others need solved<\/strong><\/h3>\n

    Tabard-Cossa\u2019s lab uses solid-state nanopore devices to find new ways to manipulate and characterize single molecules. His lab was interested in finding new materials that could be used for biomarker detection. The prefilter in the new device addresses a problem with other silicon nanopore detectors: They are more likely to clog than alternative devices that use that biological pores for sensing. Biological membranes, on the other hand, are less stable than solid state nanopores, McGrath noted.<\/p>\n

    \u201cWe love to apply our membrane technologies to solve problems that others need solved. This is a very nice example.,\u201d McGrath says.<\/p>\n

    McGrath is co-founder of SiMPore, a University-based startup that develops highly portable, chip-based devices that incorporate silicon membranes for a variety of applications, from biological sensing to dialysis.<\/p>\n

    \u201cI think we\u2019re going to realize the practical advantages of this technology in the near term,\u201d he says. A second generation of the new device, developed at SiMPore, incorporates the prefilter right on the chips during manufacturing at the wafer scale, \u201cso there\u2019s nobody breathing on it anymore,\u201d he notes. \u201cIt\u2019s actually all built as one unit and should make future studies very easy. That\u2019s a credit to the ingenuity at SiMPore and quite a legacy for Greg.\u201d<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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