Abstract
Biosensors such as DNA microarrays and microchips are gaining an increasing importance in medicinal, forensic, and environmental analyses. Such devices are based on the detection of supramolecular interactions called hybridizations that occur between complementary oligonucleotides, one linked to a solid surface (the probe), and the other one to be analyzed (the target). This paper focuses on the improvements that hyperbranched and perfectly defined nanomolecules called dendrimers can provide to this methodology. Two main uses of dendrimers for such purpose have been described up to now; either the dendrimer is used as linker between the solid surface and the probe oligonucleotide, or the dendrimer is used as a multilabeled entity linked to the target oligonucleotide. In the first case the dendrimer generally induces a higher loading of probes and an easier hybridization, due to moving away the solid phase. In the second case the high number of localized labels (generally fluorescent) induces an increased sensitivity, allowing the detection of small quantities of biological entities.