Clinical Micro Sensors: Electronic DNA

The device, which is about one-sixth the size of a credit card, consists of a conventional circuit board upon which gold microelectrodes are placed. Attached to the microelectrodes are rods of six-carbon rings (phenylacetylene) which the company dubs "molecular wires." These molecular wires in turn are attached to DNA capture probes that are designed to bind a particular desired DNA sequence.

When a sample is added to the system, the DNA will bind to the capture probes. Ferrocene, an organometallic complex, is simultaneously added as a reagent that attaches to the sample DNA...