A nanoplasmonic molecular ruler for measuring nuclease activity and DNA footprinting
October 16, 2006 | Source: News-Medical.Net
Researchers have a new tool for studying interactions between proteins and nucleic acids: a nanoscale optical ruler than can detect small changes in the size of a given piece of DNA.
This work is reported in the inaugural issue of the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
The device uses gold nanoparticles, which emit light at well-defined wavelengths of light, influenced by the exact physical and chemical environment, such as DNA length.