Monitoring biomolecular interactions on a digital versatile disk: a BioDVD platform technology

A spinning-disk biosensor utilizing optical interference of reflected light from a multilayered structure, consisting of dielectric, metal, and optical phase-change thin films, is shown to have the potential to monitor various interactions on its surface. We refer to this platform as a BioDVD, since it utilizes the optical system of a digital versatile disk (DVD) to measure changes in reflected light intensity. Here, we demonstrated that nucleic acid hybridization and RNA-protein interactions can be analyzed efficiently, in a label-free environment, by measuring the reflected light intensity using a DVD-like mechanism. Moreover, our studies revealed that the detection sensitivity for the interactions on the BioDVD can be altered by shifting the state of the phase-change materials, where the amorphous state can be used for analysis and another state (crystalline) can be used both for recording information and selectively masking areas of the disk.