Selective dehybridization of DNA–Au nanoconjugates using laser irradiation

Abstract

Plasmonic heating to trigger release of oligonucleotides from nanoconjugates is potentially useful for therapeutic purposes and designed assembly of DNA nanostructures. In the past, great controllability has been achieved by introducing distinctive absorption nanoparticle centers, where the anchoring bond (e.g., sulfur–gold bond) has been selectively broken. Instead of releasing the surface-bound duplex DNA via breakage of the gold–sulphur anchor bond, selective and non-destructive dehybridization of DNA under a “mild” condition on different gold nanoconjugates is demonstrated in this work. This finding will permit sequential dehybridization/release of DNA at specific regions of a complex system; thus it can be extended to control gene expression and to manipulate an assembly of highly organized DNA constructs. Particularly we show herein the feasibility of selectively dehybridizing DNA–Au nanoconjugates via localized plasmonic heating, which is accomplished by controlling the laser wavelength, power, and irradiation time.