Development of polymer-coated glass slides as optical oligonucleotide microarrays

The microarray technology is in needed of cost-effective, low background noise and stable substrates for successful hybridization and analysis.

In this research, we developed a three-dimentional stable and mechanically reliable microarray substrates by coating of two polymeric layers on standard microscope glass slides. For fabrication of these substrates, a thin film of oxidized agarose was prepared on the Poly-L-Lysine (PLL) coated glass slides. Unmodified oligonucleotide probes were spotted and immobilized on these double layered thin films by adsorption on the porous structure of the agarose film. Some of the aldehyde groups of the activated agarose linked covalently to PLL amine groups; on the other side, they bound to amino groups of adsorbed tail of biomolecules. These linkages were fixed by UV irradiation at 254 nm using a CL-1000 UV. These prepared substrates were compared to only agarose-coated and PLL-coated slides.

Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) results demonstrated that agarose provided three-dimensional surface which had higher loading and bindig capacity for biomolecules than PLL-coated surface which had two-dimensional surface. The nano-indentation tests demonstrated the prepared double coating was more reliable and flexible for mechanical robotic spotting. In addition, the repeated indentation on different substrates showed uniformity of coatings. The stability of novel coating was sufficient for hybridization process. The signal-to-noise ratio in hybridization reactions performed on the agarose-PLL coated substrates increased two fold and four fold compared to agarose and PLL coated substrates, respectively.

Finally, the agarose-PLL microarrays had the highest signal (2920) and lowest background signal (205) in hybridization, suggesting that the prepared slides are suitable in analyzing wide concentration range of analytes.