Nearly instantaneous, cation-independent, high selectivity nucleic acid hybridization to DNA microarrays

Hybridization rate enhancement has been demonstrated for high molecular wei ght DNA target binding to a microarrays Microarrays were fabricated using b iotin-modified oligonucleotides complexed with streptavidin (SA), which ser ves as an attachment to the underlying surface. It is shown that at low sal t and pH 5, where SA develops a positive charge, duplex formation becomes a t least 80-fold faster than seen under standard conditions, where SA is neu tral or anionic. Duplex formation becomes independent of solution state cat ion concentration in the low pH state, under conditions where specificity r emains high, The utility of such applied surface science is discussed, (C) 2001 Academic Press.