Fluorescent signal amplification of carbocyanine dyes using engineered viral nanoparticles

An enhancement in the fluorescent signal of the carbocyanine dye Cy5 by using an engineered virus as a scaffold to attach >40 Cy5 reporter molecules at fixed location on the viral capsid are presented. When compared with the most often used detection methods in a microarray based genotyping assay for vibrio cholerae O139, these viral nanoparticles markedly increased assay sensitivity, thus demonstrating their applicability for existing DNA microarray protocols.