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DFG fördert Nanobiotechnologie im Fachbereich 3.1

03.06.2015

In biological systems, measurands may be the concentration of large biomolecules or the viral load in bodily fluids. The exact knowledge of such measurands in biosystems is of key importance in areas like health care or nutrition. Emerging health markers such as proteins can be indicative for specific bodily malfunctions. They occur in an extremely diverse environment with a large number of related interfering or interacting compounds.

Hence, even small deviations from the expected concentration of specific biomarkers or their mere appearance at extremely low concentration levels can be essential or fatal and are therefore of critical diagnostic importance. Typically, the knowledge about these mark¬ers is based on immunochemical methods in routine measurements. Those tools often lack specificity, especially when they are applied in the complex environment of a body fluid or cell. Cross-reactions can lead to massive deviations of measurement results be¬tween routine tools for the same analyte. The metrological research aims to provide higher accuracy, if possible by primary measurement methods, for the unambiguous detection and precise quantification of such markers as reference tools.

New nanotechnological strategies shall be employed here in the NanoMet Research Training Group to achieve metrologically sound measure¬ments i.e. to achieve results that are traceable to SI units and have a known measurement uncertainty.

In the first case, nanobiotechnological tools shall be used to manipulate and cleave the objects (analytes) of interest in such a way that they become accessible to established primary measurement procedures using, for example, Isotope Dilution Mass Spectrometry (IDMS).

In the second case, the specific properties of tailor-made nanostructures shall be exploited to enable new reference measurement technologies. An entirely novel technology of this kind is Iso¬tope Dilution Surface Enhanced Raman Spectrometry (IDSERS). The current status of this emerging tool also builds upon the joint activities of the TU Braunschweig and PTB in the B-IGSM.

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