SILICON NANOWIRE BIOSENSOR FOR STUDYING NUCLEAR HORMONE RECEPTOR AND RESPONSE ELEMENT INTERACTIONS

Silicon nanowire (SiNW) biosensor capable of studying the interactions between human ERs (ER, α and β subtypes) and EREs (dsDNA) is described. The ERs were covalently immobilized on the SiNW surface. Various EREs including wild-type, mutant and scrambled sequences were then applied to the ER-functionalized SiNW surface. The results show that the specificity of the ERE-ERα binding is higher than that of the ERE-ERβ binding, what is more, the mutant ERE reduces the binding affinity for both ERα and ERβ. A very low concentration of 10 fM wild-type ERE was found to be able to bind to the ERα.