Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Detection And Melting Of Surface-Bound Dna Using A Purely Electrochemical Approach, Denny Ho

Master's Theses

In this thesis, we demonstrate an electrochemical approach for monitoring the electric-field induced melting of surface-bound double-stranded DNA. The electrochemical routine involves repeated chronoamperometry pulses to melt the duplex and square wave voltammetry to monitor the extent of melting. We utilize a scanning potential and constant potential technique to generate melting curves and access the stability and kinetics of the DNA duplexes. Our method uses a mixed monolayer of thiol-modified DNA oligomers and mercaptohexanol on gold electrodes, are subsequently incubated with target DNA covalently modified with electroactive methylene blue. Under room temperature, 10 mM Tris, and optimized electrochemical parameters, DNA …