Au Nanoparticle-Based Amplified DNA Detection on Poly-l-lysine Monolayer-Functionalized Electrodes

Affinity sensing of nucleic acids is among the most investigated areas in biosensing due to the growing importance of DNA diagnostics in healthcare research and clinical applications. Here, we report a simple electrochemical DNA detection layer, based on poly-l-lysine (PLL), in combination with gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) as a signal amplifier. The layer shows excellent reduction of non-specific binding and thereby high contrast between amplified and non-amplified signals with functionalized AuNPs; the relative change in current was 10-fold compared to the non-amplified signal. The present work may provide a general method for the detection of tumor markers based on electrochemical DNA sensing.