COLLABORATION IN BASIC SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING (COBASE)

Aiming to define the requirements and capabilities for combining bioaffinity sensor technologies, Omowunmi Sadik from the State University of New York-Binghamton invited Eugen Gheorghiu from the National Institute of Biotechnology in Romania for a month-long visit in April 2001. The collaborative exchange was continued by Sadik’s visit to Gheorghiu’s institute in Bucharest in July 2001. Through these laboratory visits, Sadik hoped to work on the use of dielectric spectroscopy for monitoring the dynamics of antibody-antigen interaction, which could eventually be used in the identification and detection of chemicals in the food industry as well as environmental and bioterrorism-related applications.

During their visits, Sadik and Gheorghiu confirmed evidence of Ab-Ag binding through the evolution of differential admittance between the real and imaginary components. This was amplified by a factor of a thousand, thus resulting in a dramatic change in sensitivity. The scientists then generated a full research paper detailing the theoretical and experimental approaches useful in understanding the immobilization chemistry for biosensor applications. Their joint efforts yielded the development of the underlying theory involved in the dynamics of antibody-antigen interactions using linear dielectric impedance spectroscopy.

Further collaborative research between Sadik and Gheorghiu will involve extending the approaches for detection of Ab-Ag interaction and for other bioaffinity interactions including DNA-DNA, DNA-RNA and DNA small molecule reactions. The novelty of the proposed future work lies in being the first example, or attempt, of how EIS can be used to study heterogeneous reaction mechanism both by phenomenological and microscopic approaches during polymerase chain reactions. If successful, the results are expected to improve our understanding of polymerase chain reactions, provide novel tools for determining reaction zone concentrations, and elucidate how several theoretical factors are likely to influence the products of PCR reactions. The scientists are hoping to continue their work together and have initiated this process through the submission of proposals both the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Health.