生物信息学技术

This chapter summarizes the properties of fluorescent semiconductor nanocrystals (quantum dots), and their relationship to performance in biological assays. The properties of quantum dots (optical, structural, compositional, etc.) are described. Recent work employing th ...

Luminescent colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals (quantum dots) are robust inorganic fluorophores that have the potential to circumvent some of the functional limitations encountered by organic dyes in sensing and biotechnological applications. Quantum dots exhibit s ...

The quantum dot is a novel fluorescent platform that has the potential to become an alternative to conventional organic dyes used to label biological probes such as antibodies or ligands. Compared to typical fluorescent organic dyes, cadmium selenide/zinc sulfide core-shell nanocry ...

Peptide-quantum dot conjugates have been prepared by attaching angiotensin II (Ang II) to cadmium selenide/zinc sulfide core-shell nanocrystals using an 1--3-ethylcarbo diimide hydrochloride (EDC) coupling. These conjugates have been used to image angiotensin I-expressing ...

Multicolor optical coding for biological assays has been achieved by embedding semiconductor quantum dots into mesoporous and macroporous beads at precisely controlled ratios. Owing to their novel optical properties such as size-tunable emission and simultaneous excitati ...

In this chapter, we outline a simple procedure using gold nanoshells as a substrate for an immunoassay that is capable of detecting subnanogram levels of analyte within whole blood on the order of minutes. Unique to metallic nanoshells is their optical tunability over a large range of wavelengt ...

In this chapter, we outline protocols for assembling and characterizing peptide-gold nanoparticle conjugates. We describe two strategies for attaching peptides to gold nanoparticles. One involves the covalent coupling of cysteine-terminated peptides directly to a partic ...

We have developed striped metal nanoparticles, Nanobarcodes� particles, which can act as encoded substrates in multiplexed assays. These particles are metallic, encodeable, machine-readable, durable, submicron-sized tags. The power of this technology is that the particles are ...

We develop a shape-based coarse-grained (SBCG) model for DNA-functionalized gold nanoparticles (DNA-Au NPs) and use this to study the interaction of this potential antisense therapeutic with a lipid bilayer model of a cell membrane that is also represented using a coarse-grained model. M ...

Many promising strategies have been developed for controlling the release of drugs from scaffolds, yet there are still challenges that need to be addressed in order for these scaffolds to serve as successful treatments. The RADA4 self-assembling peptide spontaneously forms nanofib ...

Tissue-engineered medical implants, such as polymeric nanofiber scaffolds, are potential alternatives to autografts and allografts, which are short in supply and carry risks of disease transmission. These scaffolds have been used to engineer various soft connective tissues su ...

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are novel, one-dimensional nanomaterials with many unique physical and chemical properties that have been increasingly explored for biological and biomedical applications. In this chapter, we briefly summarize the intrinsic properties of single-wa ...

Virus delivery vectors are one among the many nanomaterials that are being developed as drug delivery materials. This chapter focuses on methods utilizing plant virus nanoparticles (PVNs) synthesized from the Red clover necrotic mosaic virus (RCNMV). A successful vector must be able to e ...

The increasing development of bacterial resistance to traditional antibiotics has reached alarming levels, thus there is an urgent need to develop new antimicrobial agents. To be effective, these new antimicrobials should possess novel modes of action and/or different cellular ta ...

Photodynamic therapy is a relatively new clinical therapeutic modality that is based on three key components: photosensitizer, light, and molecular oxygen. Nanoparticles, especially targeted ones, have recently emerged as an efficient carrier of drugs or contrast agents, or mult ...

Some efficient diagnosis and therapy systems require the isolation and quantification of circulating tumor cells (CTCs), since these species are important “biomarkers” for monitoring cancer metastasis and prognosis. Existing techniques for isolating/counting CTCs incl ...

The gene silencing capability of RNA interference (RNAi) is being used to study individual gene's biological function and role in biochemical pathways. However, the efficacy of RNAi depends upon efficient delivery of the intermediates of RNAi, small interfering RNA (siRNA) oligonucl ...

Bio-cell chips are microarrays, which are composed of collections of cell spots attached to the surface. They hold intact cells and therefore enable the study of gene—gene interactions and gene—protein interactions in a cell with three-dimensional positional information. The autho ...

Microchip capillary electrophoresis (MCE) is gaining popularity due to the developments of simple microfabrication methods under nonstringent laboratory conditions. Moreover, the low material and production costs of polymer-based microchips have further stimulated a ...

There is always a need to detect the presence of microorganisms, either as contaminants in food and pharmaceutical industries or bioindicators for disease diagnosis. Hence, it is important to develop efficient, rapid, and simple methods to detect microorganisms. Traditional cultur ...