Effect of silver and titanium dioxide nanoparticles on PCR efficiency

Interaction between nanomaterials and biological systems and the role nanomaterials play in biochemical reactions is of great interest nowadays due to the unique properties of nanomaterials and their potential applications in biomedical engineering. Recently, nanoparticle PCR research has attracted more attention. However, research has been focused on gold nanoparticles exclusively and there is no work about the effect of other nanoparticles reported yet. In this work, the effect of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) and titanium dioxide nanoparticles (TiO₂NPs) is evaluated using a real-time PCR machine. It is found that AgNPs start to cause PCR inhibition at 30 ¿g/mL. TiO₂NPs exhibit much stronger inhibitory effect. They start to cause PCR inhibition at 0.8 ¿g/mL. When different amounts of AgNPs and TiO₂NPs are added to PCR solution, some interesting phenomenon is observed. The effect of the combination of AgNPs and TiO₂NPs is not simply the linear combination of the effect of individual AgNPs and TiO₂NPs. However, by choosing the combination of AgNPs and TiO₂NPs, PCR inhibition can be minimized. The observations suggest that a complex interaction mechanism exists between AgNPs and TiO₂NPs.