Development of a Protein Microarray Chip with Enhanced Fluorescence for Identification of Semen and Vaginal Fluid

Abstract

The detection of body fluids has been used to identify a suspect and build a criminal case. As the amount of evidence collected at a crime site is limited, a multiplex identification system for body fluids using a small amount of sample is required. In this study, we proposed a multiplex detection platform using an Ag vertical nanorod metal enhanced fluorescence (MEF) substrate for semen and vaginal fluid (VF), which are important evidence in cases of sexual crime. The Ag nanorod MEF substrate with a length of 500 nm was fabricated by glancing angle deposition, and amino functionalization was conducted to improve binding ability. The effect of incubation time was analyzed, and an incubation time of 60 min was selected, at which the fluorescence signal was saturated. To assess the performance of the developed identification chip, the identification of semen and VF was carried out. The developed sensor could selectively identify semen and VF without any cross-reactivity. The limit of detection of the fabricated microarray chip was 10 times better than the commercially available rapid stain identification (RSID) Semen kit.