Sufyaan joins us once again after graduating this year from Walnut Hills High School. He will be attending Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. He continues his work in the White group this summer to study aptamer based biosensors. Sufyaan writes about his research project as follows:
This summer I worked in the White Lab, and studied how ferricyanide (Fe(CN)63-) can be utilized to amplify the sensing signal of electrochemical-DNA sensors. This work is a continuation of the work I did last summer, where we utilized Fe(CN)63- to detect probe flexibility. Based on the previous work, we made the assumption that Fe(CN)63- can be used to enhance the sensing signal as most sensors utilize changes in structure to measure signal changes. This work is of importance as it leads to sensors that have not only better sensitivity, but also increased specificity. The study involved the use of gold surfaced E-DNA sensors with a DNA strand containing methylene blue (MB) redox label attached to it. We then collected square wave voltammetry scans of the sensors in a buffer solution, a 200 uM FeCN6 solution, and finally the Fe(CN)63- solution containing 10 nM of the target DNA, at 2 Hz. From our current data, we have seen an increase in the specificity of the DNA sensor, as they were able to differentiate between a 10 nM sample of a perfect match and a single base pair mismatch. In our future work, we plan to show the sensors ability to differentiate a perfect match from a methylated DNA target.
Here is a video where Sufyaan explains why he is doing research at UC this summer.