1. Production and Targeting of Monovalent Quantum Dots
- Author
-
Kade Southard, Justin Farlow, Daeha Seo, Zev J. Gartner, and Young-wook Jun
- Subjects
General Chemical Engineering ,phosphorothioate ,single particle tracking ,monovalent quantum dots ,Phosphorothioate Oligonucleotides ,Nanotechnology ,Bioengineering ,010402 general chemistry ,01 natural sciences ,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology ,03 medical and health sciences ,chemistry.chemical_compound ,Cell Line, Tumor ,Quantum Dots ,Moiety ,Humans ,Issue 92 ,030304 developmental biology ,chemistry.chemical_classification ,0303 health sciences ,General Immunology and Microbiology ,Biomolecule ,General Neuroscience ,DNA ,Single Molecule Imaging ,Molecular biology ,0104 chemical sciences ,3. Good health ,nanoparticle bioconjugation ,SNAP-tag ,chemistry ,Quantum dot ,Single-particle tracking ,single molecule imaging ,SNAP tag ,steric exclusion - Abstract
The multivalent nature of commercial quantum dots (QDs) and the difficulties associated with producing monovalent dots have limited their applications in biology, where clustering and the spatial organization of biomolecules is often the object of study. We describe here a protocol to produce monovalent quantum dots (mQDs) that can be accomplished in most biological research laboratories via a simple mixing of CdSe/ZnS core/shell QDs with phosphorothioate DNA (ptDNA) of defined length. After a single ptDNA strand has wrapped the QD, additional strands are excluded from the surface. Production of mQDs in this manner can be accomplished at small and large scale, with commercial reagents, and in minimal steps. These mQDs can be specifically directed to biological targets by hybridization to a complementary single stranded targeting DNA. We demonstrate the use of these mQDs as imaging probes by labeling SNAP-tagged Notch receptors on live mammalian cells, targeted by mQDs bearing a benzylguanine moiety.
- Published
- 2014