Instrument for Label-Free Detection of Noncoding RNAs.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Journal of Sensors Volume 2012, Article ID 208079, 5 pages doi:10.1155/2012/208079 Research Article Instrument for Label-Free Detection of Noncoding RNAs Peter Noy,1 Roger Steiner,1 Joerg Voelkle,1 Martin Hegner,2 and Christof Fattinger1 1 F. Hoff mann-La Roche Ltd., Pharma Research and Early Development, Discovery Technologies, 4070 Basel, Switzerland 2 CRANN—The Naughton Institute, School of Physics, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland Correspondence should be addressed to Peter Noy, peter.noy@ Received 15 June 2011; Accepted 11 August 2011 Academic Editor: Maria Tenje Copyright © 2012 Peter Noy et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. We set up a label-free direct binding assay for the detection of noncoding RNAs. The assay is based on nanomechanical cantilever arrays for the detection of surface stress induced by immobilized biomolecules and their interaction partners. We used various means to significantly reduce the drift of the cantilever readout that was a prominent feature in experiments with readout in stationary fluid before and after sample injection. Major improvements were achieved by focusing on a faster system equilibration (for instance temperature control and diffusion independence). Experimental protocols were improved to provide user-friendly and less time-consuming measurements. Further enhancements were achieved by, for example, using pre-gold-coated cantilever array wafers compared to individually prepared ones and a directly implemented data analysis tool as real-time feature of the measurement software. We have demonstrated picomolar sp