Nanosensors and biochips: frontiers in biomolecular diagnostics

In the past two decades, the biotechnology and medical fields have seen great advances in the development of novel technologies that open new horizons for identifying and quantifying biomolecules, and diagnosing diseases. This manuscript provides an overview of two of those important technologies, nanosensors and biochips. We describe various types of nanosensors and biochips that have been developed for biological and medical applications, along with significant advances achieved over the last several years in these technologies. Some applications of nanosensors, developed in our laboratory for single-cell analysis, and applications of biochips for biological sensing of pathogenic agents and medical diagnostics are described to illustrate the usefulness and potential of these technologies. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. Ah rights reserved.