Volume 34, Issue 1-2

Hairpin DNA probes (HDPs) are specially designed single-stranded DNA and have excellent sensing specificity. The past decade has witnessed the fast development of HDP-based biosensors due to the tremendous applications in biology, medicine, environmental science, and engineering. Their detectable targets include nucleic acids, proteins, small molecules, and metal ions. In this review, we summarize the recent progress in HDP-based biosensors by categorizing them into molecular beacon (MB)-based sensing in homogeneous systems and other HDP-based solid-state sensors. The basic design of MBs with diverse signaling pairs is introduced first. Then, various detectable targets and the detection principles of all HDP-based biosensors are extensively discussed. Furthermore, the methods for amplifying the response signal and improving the detection performance are covered. Finally, the limitations and possible solutions about the sensors are discussed.

An extensive survey of the literature published in various analytical and pharmaceutical chemistry-related journals have been conducted, and the instrumental analytical methods that were developed and used for the determination of proton pump inhibitors in bulk drugs, formulations, and biological fluids have been reviewed. This review covers the time period from 1990 to 2011 during which 80 analytical methods, including all types of spectrophotometric and chromatographic techniques were reported. High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with ultra violet (UV) detection was found to be the technique of choice for many workers, and more than 50 methods were based on liquid chromatography (LC) and ultra violet (UV). A critical analysis of the reported data was carried out and the present state of the art of the analytical techniques for the determination of omeprazole, esomeprazole, pantoprazole, rabeprazole, dexrabeprazole, tenatoprazole, lansoprazole, and dexlansoprazole is discussed.

Capillary X-ray optics is versatile, and it can be used with synchrotron radiation source, conventional X-ray source, laser-plasma ultrafast X-ray source, and so forth. Recently, the confocal X-ray technology based on capillary X-ray optics has become popular, and it has been widely used in X-ray fluorescence, X-ray absorption fine structure, X-ray diffraction, small-angle X-ray scattering, X-ray imaging, and X-ray scattering. This confocal X-ray technology has applications in many fields, including environmental monitoring, food science, life science, chemistry, physics, nanomaterials, nondestructive test, security check, and so on.