Tab Article

This volume explores recent progress in the microelectronics arena, the resultant miniaturization of component device features to nanometer size particles, and the ensuing growth in the development and use of microchip-based techniques in leading laboratories around the world. While the area of microelectronics is faced with daunting challenges, it promises fascinating new advances that may translate into products such as sensors and devices that use nanometer-sized building blocks for real-world applications. The contributors to this volume are part of growing interdisciplinary efforts among pioneers in microelectronics, nanoscience, and health that will continue to create exciting new microchip-based applications across a variety of sectors. In the 16 chapters of this volume, leading scientists present technically precise microchip-based assays for a variety of applications. Highlights include methods for microchip electrophoresis for DNA separation; fabrication of porous polymer monoliths in microfluidic chips for selective nucleic acid concentration and purification; rapid electrical lysis of bacterial cells in a microfluidic device; an on-chip bioassay that uses immobilized sensing bacteria in a three-dimensional microfluidic network; and impedimetric detection for DNA hybridization within microfluidic biochips. Molecular diagnostic and immunologic protocols include microchip-based enumeration of human white blood cells; microchip diagnosis of cervical cancer; protocols for DNA microchips toward molecular signatures in cervical cancer; a microchip-based assay for Interleukin-6; and methods for microchip-based electrochemical enzyme immunoassays. Several chapters are devoted to topics in microarray technology, including applications of functional protein microarrays; allergen microarrays for the diagnosis of specific IgE in a multiplex biochip-based immunoassay; protein-array based multiplexed cytokine assays; and lectin microarrays for glycoprotein assays.