Biocurious

/ a biophysics blog

Hot off the Press: Quantum Dot DNA Sensors

Posted 9 November 2005 by PhilipJ under

In the most recent issue of Nature Materials, a Letter describing a new quantum dot(QD)-based DNA nanosensor is presented, a technique that is entirely different from traditional microarray chips.

Due to the unique properties of QDs (see this wikipedia entry), a group from Johns Hopkins has found a way to label individual quantum dots with many copies of a short probe strand of DNA. Upon binding a dye-labelled reporter strand of DNA, the quantum dot and dyed reporter strand act as an acceptor-donor pair for fluorescence resonsance energy transfer—FRET—based detection.

Without bound reporter strands, background noise is near-zero, while a detectable signal is seen for as few as 50 bound reporter molecules to a single QD. As a proof-of-concept, they also report on detection of a reporter molecule with a single point mutations, typical of some ovarian tumors.

The full article is here, while Nature’s own News and Views article is here (subscription required for both).

  

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