Serotype-specific identification of Dengue virus by silicon nanowire array biosensor

In this work, we demonstrated a silicon nanowire (SiNW) biosensing platform capable of simultaneously identifying different Dengue serotypes on a single sensing chip. Four peptide nucleic acids (PNAs), specific to each Dengue serotypes (DENV-1 to DENV-4), were spotted on different areas of the SiNW array surface, and the covalently immobilized PNA probes were then interacted with different Dengue serotypes target to establish the specificity of detection. Detection scheme is based on the changes in resistances due to accumulation of negative charges contributed by the hybridized DNA target. The results show that resistance changes only occur in regions where the Dengue target hybridizes with its complementary probe. What is more, a mixture of two different Dengue serotypes obtained from a one-step duplex RT-PCR was applied to the multiplex SiNW surface to validate SiNW capability to identify multiple Dengue serotypes on a single sensing platform. Through this study, we have established the multiplex SiNW biosensor as a promising device to detect multiple Dengue infections with high specificity.