Electrochemical Bioelectronic Device Consisting of Metalloprotein for Analog Decision Making

Recent Advances in Biomolecule-Nanomaterial Heterolayer-Based Charge Storage Devices for Bioelectronic Applications

With the acceleration of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the development of information and communications technology requires innovative information storage devices and processing devices with low power and ultrahigh stability. Accordingly, bioelectronic devices have gained considerable attention as a promising alternative to silicon-based devices because of their various applications, including human-body-attached devices, biomaterial-based computation systems, and biomaterial-nanomaterial hybrid-based charge storage devices. Nanomaterial-based charge storage devices have witnessed considerable development owing to their similarity to conventional charge storage devices and their ease of applicability. The introduction of a biomaterial-to-nanomaterial-based system using a combination of biomolecules and nanostructures provides outstanding electrochemical, electrical, and optical properties that can be applied to the fabrication of charge storage devices. Here, we describe the recent advances in charge storage devices containing a biomolecule and nanoparticle heterolayer including (1) electrical resistive charge storage devices, (2) electrochemical biomemory devices, (3) field-effect transistors, and (4) biomemristors. Progress in biomolecule-nanomaterial heterolayer-based charge storage devices will lead to unprecedented opportunities for the integration of information and communications technology, biotechnology, and nanotechnology for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Development of Bioelectronic Devices Using Bionanohybrid Materials for Biocomputation System

Bioelectronic devices have been researched widely because of their potential applications, such as information storage devices, biosensors, diagnosis systems, organism-mimicking processing system cell chips, and neural-mimicking systems. Introducing biomolecules including proteins, DNA, and RNA on silicon-based substrates has shown the powerful potential for granting various functional properties to chips, including specific functional electronic properties. Until now, to extend and improve their properties and performance, organic and inorganic materials such as graphene and gold nanoparticles have been combined with biomolecules. In particular, bionanohybrid materials that are composed of biomolecules and other materials have been researched because they can perform core roles of information storage and signal processing in bioelectronic devices using the unique properties derived from biomolecules. This review discusses bioelectronic devices related to computation systems such as biomemory, biologic gates, and bioprocessors based on bionanohybrid materials with a selective overview of recent research. This review contains a new direction for the development of bioelectronic devices to develop biocomputation systems using biomolecules in the future.

Electrochemical nucleic acid detection based on parallel structural dsDNA/recombinant azurin hybrid

Several challenges remained to fabricate a molecular-level nucleic acid biosensor such as surface immobilization control, single mismatch detection and low current response. To overcome those issues, for the first time, authors presented a novel parallel structural dsDNA/recombinant azurin (PSD/rAzu) hybrid structure for the general nucleic acid detection. The PSD was designed and introduced by the optimized 8 Ag+ ions to have greater conductivity than the canonical dsDNA, and conjugated with rAzu to develop a general platform for electrochemical detection of miRNAs and viral DNAs with high reproducibility and ultra-sensitivity towards single base pair mutation. Thanks to the bifunctional rAzu as the selective spacer and electrochemical signal mediator, in the presence of the target strand, the imperfect PSD switched rapidly to the upright position where the Ag+ ions intercalated between C-C mismatches of dsDNAs at the top of each structure brought further from the electrode surface resulting in a significant electrochemical signal drop of the Ag+ ions. The charge transfer (CT) mechanism across the hybrid structure was simply clarified on the basis of the redox potential location of the species. The electrical conductivity of DNAs were measured using scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS) at the molecular scale and cyclic voltammetry (CV) technique based on the reduction of Ag+ ion. The proposed PSD/rAzu hybrid structure with a great capability of single mutation recognition and miRNA expression level profiling in cancer cells holds a very promising platform to be studied for further development of various kinds of nanoscale biosensors, bioelectronic devices.