Capillary-Assisted Molecular Pendulum Bioanalysis
Hossein Zargartalebi, Hanie Yousefi, Connor D. Flynn, Surath Gomis, Jagotamoy Das, Tiana L. Young, Emily Chien, Samira Mubareka, Allison McGeer, Hansen Wang, Edward H. Sargent, Amir Sanati‐Nezhad, Shana O. Kelley
Abstract
The development of robust biosensing strategies that can be easily implemented in everyday life remains a challenge for the future of modern biosensor research. While several reagentless approaches have attempted to address this challenge, they often achieve user-friendliness through sacrificing sensitivity or universality. While acceptable for certain applications, these trade-offs hinder the widespread adoption of reagentless biosensing technologies. Here, we report a novel approach to reagentless biosensing that achieves high sensitivity, rapid detection, and universality using the SARS-CoV-2 virus as a model target. Universality is achieved by using nanoscale molecular pendulums, which enables reagentless electrochemical biosensing through a variable antibody recognition element. Enhanced sensitivity and rapid detection are accomplished by incorporating the coffee-ring phenomenon into the sensing scheme, allowing for target preconcentration on a ring-shaped electrode. Using this approach, we obtained limits of detection of 1 fg/mL and 20 copies/mL for the SARS-CoV-2 nucleoproteins and viral particles, respectively. In addition, clinical sample analysis showed excellent agreement with Ct values from PCR-positive SARS-CoV-2 patients.