ABSTRACT
Over the past decade, researchers have designed, synthesized, studied, and applied polyvalent DNA-functionalized gold nanoparticles (DNA-AuNPs) [1]. These efforts have resulted in a new fundamental understanding of hybrid nanostructures [2], important and in certain cases commercially viable detection and diagnostic assays [3], and the ability to program materials assembly through the use of DNA synthons [1, 4]. Polyvalent DNA-AuNPs 1578have several unique properties, such as sharp and elevated melting temperatures [2b], enhanced binding properties [2c] (as compared with free strands of the same sequence), and distance-dependent optical properties [5]. In agreement with research on polyvalent molecular systems [6], the high surface DNA density and the ability of the nanoparticles to engage in multidentate interactions are the proposed origin of these unique properties.
