Effect of Probe Design on Chemiluminescence Detection of Hepatitis B Virus and Hepatitis C Virus

Probe design is an important part in fabricating highly sensitive bioassays. In this paper, it is demonstrated that even small changes in probe design parameters can scupper efficiency of any biosensor. Different probes were designed for capturing HBV, and HCV biotin-labeled PCR amplified segments in a chemiluminescence detection assay. It was found that probes binding to the terminal sequence of target DNA generated strong detection signals; however, specificity of these probes was poor. Probe length was also noticed to play a critical role in the successful probetarget bio-recognition event. Probes with sequence length equal to 18 bp or higher outstripped the probes having sequence length shorter than 18 bp. Similarly, Probes with higher GC contents performed better in comparison with probes with lower GC contents. Conclusively, these results could be helpful in making highly efficient biosensors in future.