Get the latest biotech news where you want it. This achievement shatters the previous record, setting a new benchmark for the most sensitive limit of detection, and may significantly advance early disease diagnostics.

In 2012, Arnold and his team were able to detect in solution the smallest known RNA virus, MS2, with a mass of 6 Air Jordan 16s attograms. Now, with experimental work by postdoctoral fellow Venkata Dantham and former student David Keng, two proteins have been detected: a human cancer marker protein called Thyroglobulin, with a mass of just 1 attogram, and the bovine form of a common plasma protein, serum albumin, with a Air Jordan 6s far smaller mass of 0.11 attogram. “An attogram is a millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a gram,” said Arnold, “and we believe that our new limit of detection may be smaller than 0.01 attogram.”

This latest milestone builds on a technique pioneered by Arnold and collaborators from NYU Poly and Fordham University. In 2012, the researchers set the first sizing record by treating a novel biosensor with plasmonic gold nano receptors, enhancing the electric field of the sensor and allowing even the smallest shifts in resonant frequency to be detected. Their plan was to design a medical diagnostic device capable of identifying a single virus particle in a point of care setting, without the use of special assay preparations.

At the time, the notion of detecting a single proteinphenomenally smaller than a viruswas set forth as the ultimate goal.

“Proteins run the body,” explained Arnold. “When the immune system encounters a virus, it pumps out huge quantities of antibody proteins, and all cancers generate protein markers. A test capable of detecting a single protein would be the most sensitive diagnostic test imaginable.”

To the surprise of the researchers, examination of their nanoreceptor under a transmission electron microscope revealed that its gold shell surface was covered with random bumps roughly the size of a protein. Computer mapping and simulations created by Stephen Holler, once Arnold’s student and now assistant professor of physics at Fordham University, showed that these irregularities generate their own highly reactive local sensitivity field extending out several nanometers, amplifying the capabilities of the sensor far beyond original predictions. “A virus is far too large to be aided in detection by this field,” Arnold said. “Proteins are just a few nanometers acrossexactly the right size to register in this space.”

The implications of single protein detection are significant and may lay the foundation for improved medical therapeutics. Among other advances, Arnold and his colleagues posit that the ability to follow a signal in real timeto actually witness the detection of a single disease marker protein and track its movementmay yield new understanding of how proteins attach to antibodies.

Arnold named the novel method of label free detection “whispering gallery mode biosensing” because light waves in the system reminded him of the way that voices bounce around the whispering gallery under the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. A laser sends light through a glass fiber to a detector. When a microsphere is placed against the fiber, certain wavelengths of light detour into the sphere and bounce around inside, creating a dip in the light that the detector receives. When a molecule like a cancer marker clings to a gold nanoshell attached to the microsphere, the microsphere’s resonant frequency shifts by a measureable amount.

The research has been supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). This summer, Arnold will begin the next stage of expanding the capacity for these biosensors. The NSF has awarded Air Jordan 8s a new $200,000 grant to him in collaboration with University of Michigan professor Xudong Fan. The grant will support the construction of a multiplexed array of plasmonically enhanced resonators, which should allow a variety of protein to be identified in blood serum within minutes.

The publication in Nano Lettersmarks the 100th journal paper published since the 1978 founding of NYU Poly’s Microparticle Photophysics Laboratory for BioPhotonics, directed by Air Jordan Fusion 4 Arnold.

The Polytechnic Institute of New York University (formerly the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute and the Polytechnic University, now widely known as NYU Poly) is an affiliated institute of New York University, soon to be its School of Engineering. NYU Poly, founded in 1854, is the nation’s second oldest private engineering school. It is presently a comprehensive school of education and research in engineering and applied sciences, rooted in a 159 year tradition of invention, innovation and entrepreneurship. It Air Jordan Spizike remains on the cutting edge of technology, innovatively extending the benefits of science, engineering, management and liberal studies to critical real world opportunities and challenges, especially those linked to urban systems, health and wellness, and the global information economy. In addition to its programs on the main campus in New York City at MetroTech Center in downtown Brooklyn, it offers programs around the globe remotely through NYUe Poly. NYU Poly is closely connected to engineering in NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU Shanghai and to the NYU Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP) also at MetroTech, while operating two incubators in downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn.

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