Baby Spinach-based Minimal Modified Sensor (BSMS) is used for detection of small molecules. It serves as a platform for detection of an array of biomolecules such as small molecules, nucleic acids, peptides, proteins, etc. The compact nature of the BSMS sensor provides flexibility to introduce many different changes in the design. BSMS is an excellent sensitive sensor, detecting targets present in small amounts, even in nano molar (nM) range.
In diseases such as Alzheimer’s, disordered precursor proteins aggregate to form soluble oligomers/plaques and the detection procedure for these plaques is quite expensive. BSMS could potentially serve as a platform for detection of these proteins, as well as those involved in many other diseases.
The importance of BSMS lies in the philosophy of its simple design and versatile applications. MicroRNA (miRNAs) are small, endogenous, non-coding RNA which play an important role in regulating gene expression. In diseases such as cancer, the role of miRNA has been studied extensively. Dysregulation of miRNA biogenesis, whether upregulation or downregulation, has been one of the major factors in proliferation signaling, evasion of growth suppressors, activation of invasion and metastasis in cancers.
miRNAs have been identified as one of the primary biomarkers in human cancer prognosis. Hence successful identification and detection of miRNAs would further help us in development of diagnostic and therapeutic methods.
There are many methods currently available for detection of miRNA which includes microarray, RNA seq, RT-qPCR, Northern blot and in-situ hybridization. Each of these methods has their advantages as well as disadvantages. Many of these methods require large quantities of miRNA to detect while others are complicated to analyze. To overcome this BSMS is incorporated for the detection miRNA for that the researchers are undergoing further to increase the sensitivity of BSMS by changing its design.
BSMS can be further developed into a universal sensor by incorporating wide range of sensors for different targets with various sizes. Developing of a high throughput-based sensor has been one key objective for further progress of BSMS.
Author
Asha Guraka
Applied Singularity 