title: Electrochemical product detection of an asymmetric convective polymerase chain reaction.
abstract: For the first time, we describe the application of heated microwires for an asymmetric convective polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in a modified PCR tube in a small volume. The partly single-stranded product was labeled with the electrochemically active compound osmium tetroxide bipyridine using a partially complementary protective strand with five mismatches compared to the single-stranded product. The labeled product could be successfully detected at a gold electrode modified with a complementary single-stranded capture probe immobilized via a thiol-linker. Our simple thermo-convective PCR yielded electrochemically detectable products after only 5-10 min. A significant discrimination between complementary and non-complementary target was possible using different immobilized capture probes. The total product yield was approx. half the amount of the classical thermocycler PCR. Numerical simulations describing the thermally driven convective PCR explain the received data. Discrimination between complementary capture probes and non-complementary capture probes was performed using square-wave voltammetry. The coupling of asymmetric thermo-convective PCR with electrochemical detection is very promising for future compact DNA sensor devices.
authors.affiliation: University of Rostock, Department of Chemistry, Albert-Einstein-Street 3a, 18051 Rostock, Germany.
authors.forename: Heiko
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Duwensee
authors.forename: Maren
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mix
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Stubbe
authors.forename: Jan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gimsa
authors.forename: Marcel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Adler
authors.forename: Gerd-Uwe
authors.initials: GU
authors.lastname: Flechsig
mesh_terms: D015374:Biosensing Techniques / Q000295:instrumentation*; D004563:Electrochemistry / Q000295:instrumentation*; D004566:Electrodes; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis / Q000295:instrumentation*; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction / Q000295:instrumentation*; D014159:Transducers