BIO

My name is Olivia Stuehr. I'm from Cleveland, Ohio and I'm majoring in Biological Sciences on a pre-medical track. I have been working in the Lazenby lab as an undergraduate researcher for almost 4 semesters now. My work consists of making sensors that detect various target molecules such as ATP and Dopamine out of microelectrodes. I also deposit gold nanostructures to the sensing platform and am continuing to alter deposition conditions in order to optimize sensor performance.

Optimization of gold nanostructured aptasensors for a multielectrode-array

Abstract

Electrochemical, aptamer-based (EAB) sensors are an emerging class of biosensors with promising applications for point-of-care (POC) devices and have been used to detect and quantify a wide range of biological and chemical analytes with high specificity. EAB sensors can be fabricated on numerous electrode surfaces such as gold. There are various methods of increasing the microscopic surface area and this is typically done to accommodate a greater number of aptamer probes on the surface to enhance the current response, which is particularly important for miniaturized sensors made from a 25-µm diameter wire. Previous attempts to increase the surface area have not thoroughly assessed the effects of gold morphology on the performance of EAB sensors on miniaturized sensors. Here, we used different electrodeposition conditions to deposit gold nanostructures on the microelectrode surface to increase the microscopic surface area, control surface morphology, and explore the resulting effects on EAB sensor performance. In order to evaluate performance, we fabricated sensors using aptamers specific to target analytes adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and dopamine (DA), then interrogated them using square wave voltammetry, and cyclic voltammetry. We can then apply these conditions and results to optimize sensing performance on a microelectrode array. The arrays are created using a custom-made 3D printed device which allows for the fabrication of closely placed microelectrodes. This creates a platform for microscale aptasensors which can be used for the simultaneous detection of multiple analytes.

Keywords: microelectrodes, 3D printing, aptasensors