Gold nanostoves for microsecond DNA melting analysis.

Stehr, Joachim; Hrelescu, Calin; Sperling, Ralph A; Raschke, Gunnar; Wunderlich, Michael; Nichtl, Alfons; Heindl, Dieter; Kürzinger, Konrad et al. · Nano Lett · 2008

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

In traditional DNA melting assays, the temperature of the DNA-containing solution is slowly ramped up. In contrast, we use 300 ns laser pulses to rapidly heat DNA bound gold nanoparticle aggregates. We show that double-stranded DNA melts on a microsecond time scale that leads to a disintegration of the gold nanoparticle aggregates on a millisecond time scale. A perfectly matching and a point-mutated DNA sequence can be clearly distinguished in less than one millisecond even in a 1:1 mixture of both targets.

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