|
Over the last few decades, the development of effective biosensors received much attention. The technical challenges lie in the fact that, for example, as few as 50 cells of E. coli O157:H7 is sufficient to cause infections, however, these 50 cells may be diluted in a large volume of complex, background mixtures. As a consequence, the current capability to detect pathogens at extremely low concentrations remains limited due to the fact that the biosensors must meet the competing requirements of extremely high sensitivity and exquisite specificity, concurrently. The research in our laboratory focuses on an alternative and complimentary solution to this problem; instead of solely improving the sensitivity or specificity of the biosensor chemistry, we utilize microfabrication technologies to integrate electrokinetic and magnetophoretic enrichment of the analytes with sequence specific biosensors in a microfluidic platform.
|
