Biomolecular Sequence Quantification Using Magnetic Nanoparticles With a Giant Magnetoresistive (GMR) Sensor

Biomolecular Sequence Quantification Using Magnetic Nanoparticles With a Giant Magnetoresistive (GMR) Sensor

Student: Dino Buro
Department: Electrical and Computer Engineering
Advisor:

Abstract

My project utilizes magnetic nanoparticles to capture, or tag, strands of interest DNA. These strands are mixed with an abundance of probe DNA strands at the surface of a GMR sensor. Weakly bonded or non-bonded hybridization structures are washed away, leaving only perfectly compliment target and probe sequence strands. A magnetic field is then applied to the double helix structures to immobilize and align the polarities of the nanoparticles. The magnetic fields of these nanoparticles creates a resistance, which is correlated to a quantification of the target DNA sequence.