Bioengineers at the University of California, San Diego have developed an electrical graphene chip capable of detecting mutations in DNA. Researchers say the technology could one day be used in various medical applications such as blood-based tests for early cancer screening, monitoring disease biomarkers and real-time detection of viral and microbial sequences. The advance was published June 13 in the online early edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"We are at the forefront of developing a fast and inexpensive digital method to detect gene mutations at high resolution--on the scale of a single nucleotide change in a nucleic acid sequence," said Ratnesh Lal, professor of bioengineering, mechanical engineering and materials science in the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego.
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