Multiple Surface Reactions in Arrays with Applications to Optical Biosensors

Transport Effects on Multiple-Component Reactions in Optical Biosensors

Optical biosensors are often used to measure kinetic rate constants associated with chemical reactions. Such instruments operate in the surface-volume configuration, in which ligand molecules are convected through a fluid-filled volume over a surface to which receptors are confined. Currently, scientists are using optical biosensors to measure the kinetic rate constants associated with DNA translesion synthesis-a process critical to DNA damage repair. Biosensor experiments to study this process involve multiple interacting components on the sensor surface. This multiple-component biosensor experiment is modeled with a set of nonlinear integrodifferential equations (IDEs). It is shown that in physically relevant asymptotic limits these equations reduce to a much simpler set of ordinary differential equations (ODEs). To verify the validity of our ODE approximation, a numerical method for the IDE system is developed and studied. Results from the ODE model agree with simulations of the IDE model, rendering our ODE model useful for parameter estimation.

Receptor heterogeneity in optical biosensors

Scientists measure rate constants associated with biochemical reactions in an optical biosensor-an instrument in which ligand molecules are convected through a flow cell over a surface to which receptors are immobilized. We quantify transport effects on such reactions by modeling the associated convection-diffusion equation with a reaction boundary condition. In experimental situations, the full PDE model reduces to a set of unwieldy integrodifferential equations (IDEs). Employing common physical assumptions, we may reduce the system to an ODE model, which is more useful in practice, and which can be easily adapted to the inverse problem of finding rate constants. The results from the ODE model compare favorably with numerical simulations of the IDEs, even outside its range of validity.