The work was designed by professor ma xingyi, a Chinese scholar at Korea university, and completed by a joint Korean and American team.The results, which could be used for real-time and low-cost diagnosis, could have important clinical implications for early cancer screening.The researchers also developed new gold nanoparticles to build biochips to diagnose genetic mutations.The sensing part of the chip is integrated on gold particles of about 30 nanometers in size with a specially prepared new bridge structure of about 2 nanometers in length.The unique microstructure of the biochip is able to respond very sensitively to the genetic material bound to the chip surface, thus identifying the spectral changes caused by the variation of a single locus in the gene sequence.The highest resolution is up to 5 gene fragments.

The team said they had designed and built eight gene chips to diagnose the eight most common and pathogenic mutations associated with breast cancer.The function of these chips has been demonstrated in breast and ovarian cancer cells.This study also completed the drawing of the data atlas of gene mutation analysis for the first time.