Polymerizing immobilization of acrylamide-modified nucleic acids and its application

The immobilization of nucleic acids on solid supports has been widely used in the detection of DNA and other biomolecules in sensor technology. Because three dimensional (3-D) hydrogel matrixes offer significant advantages for capturing probes over more conventional two dimensional (2-D) rigid substrates and the ability to provide a solution-mimicking environment, they are becoming increasingly attractive as desired supports for bio-analysis. Acrylamide-modified nucleic acids and acrylamide monomers being polymerized directly to immobilize nucleic acids is only one-step chemical process which is not interfered by exterior surroundings, and the 3-D polyacrylamide gel fabricated by this method is not required to be activated by some labile chemical treatments. Moreover, the attachment is extremely stable to withstand the cycling process involved in the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). In this paper, the development of polymerizing immobilization of acrylamide-modified nucleic acids is reviewed, and its applications in DNA sequence high-throughput analysis including mutation analysis and the whole genome sequencing are summarized. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.