Porous Silicon-Based Aptasensors: The Next Generation of Label-Free Devices for Health Monitoring

Abstract

Aptamers are artificial nucleic acid ligands identified and obtained from combinatorial libraries of synthetic nucleic acids through the in vitro process SELEX (systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment). Aptamers are able to bind an ample range of non-nucleic acid targets with great specificity and affinity. Devices based on aptamers as bio-recognition elements open up a new generation of biosensors called aptasensors. This review focuses on some recent achievements in the design of advanced label-free optical aptasensors using porous silicon (PSi) as a transducer surface for the detection of pathogenic microorganisms and diagnostic molecules with high sensitivity, reliability and low limit of detection (LoD).

A perspective on sepsis pathogenesis, biomarkers and diagnosis: A concise survey

“…In Terracciano et al. (2019), authors have presented the recent progress in the development of PSi optical aptasensors for bioengineering and biomedical applications, also discussing various PSi functionalization strategies along with techniques to improve the device performance in terms of sensitivity, response time and limit of detection (LOD).…”

Highly sensitive detection of estradiol by a SERS sensor based on TiO2 covered with gold nanoparticles

“…Surface functionalization with aptamers is gathering interest because they possess many of the important qualities required for the functionalization of SERS sensors [18][19][20][21]. Aptamers are single-stranded DNA molecules that are specifically selected to bind to a target molecule.…”

Highly sensitive detection of estradiol by a SERS sensor based on TiO2 covered with gold nanoparticles

“…Surface functionalization with aptamers is gathering interest because they possess many of the important qualities required for the functionalization of SERS sensors [19][20][21][22]. These molecules are single stranded DNA that were specifically selected to bound to a targeted molecule.…”