Creating advanced multifunctional biosensors with surface enzymatic transformations

This paper summarizes our recent work on the coupling of surface enzyme chemistry and bioaffinity interactions on biopolymer microarrays for the creation of multiplexed biosensors with enhanced selectivity and sensitivity. The surface sensitive techniques of surface plasmon resonance imaging (SPRI) and surface plasmon fluorescence spectroscopy (SPFS) are used to detect the surface enzymatic transformations in real time. Three specific examples of novel coupled surface bioaffinity/surface enzymatic processes are demonstrated: (i) a surface enzymatic amplification method utilizing the enzyme ribonuclease H (RNase H) in conjunction with RNA microarrays that permits the ultrasensitive direct detection of genomic DNA at a concentration of 1 fM without labeling or PCR amplification, (ii) the use of RNA-DNA ligation chemistry to create renewable RNA microarrays from single stranded DNA microarrays, and (iii) the application of T7 RNA polymerase for the on-chip replication of RNA from double stranded DNA microarray elements. In addition, a simple yet powerful theoretical framework that includes the contributions of both enzyme adsorption and surface enzyme kinetics is used to quantitate surface enzyme reactivity. This model is successfully applied to SPRI and SPFS measurements of surface hydrolysis reactions of RNase H and Exonuclease III (Exo III) on oligonucleotide microarrays.