DNA-Coated Nanosensors for Breath Analysis

The analysis of breath and body odors can provide valuable information relevant to disease detection, diagnosis and treatment. A variety of technical developments are being pursued to develop electronic devices intended to analyze volatile components of breath and body odors with the sensitivity, selectivity, and learning ability of high-end mammalian olfactory systems. Here, we describe a new sensor technology that has the potential to supply a large set of diverse and sensitive odorant sensors with electronic readout to provide information-rich odorant-elicited signals for analysis by pattern recognition algorithms. In addition, we demonstrate that these sensors can provide discrimination of odorant homologues consisting of aldehydes and organic acids commonly found in human breath and other body emanations over a range of concentrations.