Cell-silicon-hybrids for biomedical analysis and bioinformatics

Summary form only given. Cells are the "atoms" of all living systems. Their nanostructure consists of electrodynamic components (membranes) involved in cellular signal transduction. Frequency modulated ion currents (Ca/sup 2+/ oscillations) induced by extracellular molecular "messages" encode specific information. On the other hand, it could be shown that external application of electric field pulses influences the synthesis of messenger molecules. By coupling cells to the surface of semiconductor sensors biohybrid devices are created that are able to convert and to amplify molecular or physical input signals into detectable electrical, metabolic or morphological output signal patterns. This allows the assembly of dynamic and highly sensitive transducers of biochemical or physical signals relevant to cells. If required, such electrical readout devices can be combined with optical visualisation techniques in order to correlate the measured signal output of the cell with additional information about the underlying processes on the subcellular level. Practical applications of this technology are obvious, where the real time analysis of cellular signal processing (for example in pharmaceutical drug testing and biomolecular analytics) is of primary importance.