Chemistry Letters, Vol.38, No.8, 848-849, 2009
Detector-free and Multiple Sensing of Various Molecules Using Gold Nanoparticles and Aptazymes
We have developed a detector-free and multiple detection method for various analytes using some orthogonal pairs of cleavase-aptazymes and the corresponding probe-DNA-tethered gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) for each analyte. In this method, each cleavase-aptazyrne cleaves itself only in the presence of its cofactor (i.e. analyte), and each resulting cleaved RNA hybridizes only to the corresponding probe DNA on AuNPs to induce AuNP aggregation that can be detected with the naked eye.