Impact of Dissociation Constant on the Detection Sensitivity of Polymerization-Based Signal Amplification Reactions

Many studies have demonstrated the concept of using free-radical polymerization reactions to provide signal amplification so that molecular recognition events indicative of disease states may be detected in a simple and low-cost manner. We provide the first systematic study of how the dissociation c...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Kaastrup, Kaja, Chan, Leslie, Sikes, Hadley
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Chemical Engineering
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: American Chemical Society (ACS) 2015
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/94340
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1720-0183
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7096-138X
Description
Summary:Many studies have demonstrated the concept of using free-radical polymerization reactions to provide signal amplification so that molecular recognition events indicative of disease states may be detected in a simple and low-cost manner. We provide the first systematic study of how the dissociation constant impacts detection sensitivity in these assays, having chosen a range of dissociation constants (nanomolar to picomolar) that is typical of those encountered in molecular diagnostic applications that detect protein–protein binding events. In addition, we use experimental results to validate a mass-action kinetic model that may be used to predict assay performance as an alternative or supplement to the empirical approach to developing new polymerization-based amplification assays that has characterized the field to date.