Chemistry of Oligonucleotide-Gold Nanoparticle Conjugates

Abstract

Conjugates prepared by immobilizing thiol-terminated oligonucleotides onto gold nanoparticles form stable colloidal solutions in aqueous media. The oligonucleotides can serve as linkers to organize the gold particles reversibly into three dimensional assemblies, and the gold particles can function as colorimetric reporters for hybridization of the bound oligomers with target oligonucleotides in solution.

Keywords::

• gold
• nanoparticles
• oligonucleotide
• hybridization
• non-radioactive detection