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A DNA origami plasmonic sensor with environment-independent read-out

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Abstract

DNA origami is a promising technology for its reproducibility, flexibility, scalability and biocompatibility. Among the several potential applications, DNA origami has been proposed as a tool for drug delivery and as a contrast agent, since a conformational change upon specific target interaction may be used to release a drug or produce a physical signal, respectively. However, its conformation should be robust with respect to the properties of the medium in which either the recognition or the read-out take place, such as pressure, viscosity and any other unspecific interaction other than the desired target recognition. Here we report on the read-out robustness of a tetragonal DNA-origami/gold-nanoparticle hybrid structure able to change its configuration, which is transduced in a change of its plasmonic properties, upon interaction with a specific DNA target. We investigated its response when analyzed in three different media: aqueous solution, solid support and viscous gel. We show that, once a conformational variation is produced, it remains unaffected by the subsequent physical interactions with the environment.

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Acknowledgements

V. M. acknowledges financial support from MIUR (MIUR Giovani-Ambito “Salute dell’uomo”). Work at the Molecular Foundry, under the research project No. 3376, was supported by the Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231. We acknowledge the Facility of Nanofabrication (FNF) of IOM for the support in sample preparation, Simone Dal Zilio and Silvio Greco for help in data analysis and stimulating discussions. We acknowledge Prof. Giuseppe Firrao for valuable comments and inspiring ideas, the NanoInnovation laboratory (Elettra Sincrotrone) for suggestion provided for AFM analysis and the BioLab (Elettra Sincrotrone) for the use of lab and instrumentation.

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Author notes

  1. Luca Piantanida

    Present address: Present address: Micron School of Materials Science & Engineering, Boise State University, Boise, ID, 83725, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. CNR-IOM, AREA Science Park, Basovizza Trieste, I-34149, Italy

    Valentina Masciotti, Luca Piantanida, Denys Naumenko & Marco Lazzarino

  2. PhD Course in Nanotechnology, University of Trieste, Trieste, I-34127, Italy

    Valentina Masciotti

  3. Institute for Physics of Semiconductors, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv, 03028, Ukraine

    Denys Naumenko

  4. Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, Graz University of Technology, Graz, A-8010, Austria

    Heinz Amenitsch

  5. Materials Research Laboratory, University of Nova Gorica, Nova Gorica, SI-5000, Slovenia

    Mattia Fanetti & Matjaž Valant

  6. Institute of Fundamental and Frontier Sciences, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, 610054, China

    Matjaž Valant

  7. The Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA

    Dongsheng Lei & Gang Ren

  8. School of Physical Science and Technology, Electron Microscopy Center of LZU, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Dongsheng Lei

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  1. Valentina Masciotti
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Correspondence to Valentina Masciotti or Marco Lazzarino.

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Masciotti, V., Piantanida, L., Naumenko, D. et al. A DNA origami plasmonic sensor with environment-independent read-out. Nano Res. 12, 2900–2907 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-019-2535-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-019-2535-0

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