Electrospun manganese (III) oxide nanofiber based electrochemical DNA-nanobiosensor for zeptomolar detection of...

Nanoscale biosensors, owing to their high-sensitivity and extremely low limits-of-detection, have enabled the realization of highly complex and sophisticated miniaturized platforms for several important healthcare applications, the most predominant one being disease diagnosis. In particular, nanomaterial facilitated electrochemical detection of DNA hybridization has had an exceptional impact on fields such as genetics and cancerous mutation detection Here we report an ultrasensitive electrochemical platform using electrospun semi-conducting Manganese (III) Oxide (Mn₂O₃) nanofibers for DNA Hybridization detection. The proposed platform coalesces the inherent advantages of metal-oxide nanofibers and electrochemical transduction techniques, resulting in label-free zeptomolar detection of DNA hybridization. As proof of concept, we demonstrate zeptomolar detection of Dengue consensus primer (limit of detection: 120×10^-21M) both in control as well as spiked serum samples. Our reported detection limit is superior in comparison with previously reported electrochemical DNA hybridization sensors for Dengue virus detection, spanning both labeled and label-free transductions. This ultra-sensitivity, we believe, is a result of synthesizing a low bandgap electrospun metal-oxide nanomaterial corresponding to a specific oxidation state of Manganese. This methodology can be extended for detection of any hybridization of interest by simply adapting an appropriate functionalization protocol and thus is very generic in nature.