Adsorption of DNA on colloidal Ag nanoparticles: Effects of nanoparticle surface charge, base content and length of DNA

The adsorption of single and double stranded DNA on colloidal silver nanoparticles has been studied to investigate the effects of surface charge of the nanoparticles, the composition of the oligonucleotide and its length on the adsorption characteristics. The results explain that the nanoparticle surface charge is a key parameter determining the propensity of oligonucleotides to adsorb on nanoparticles. The adsorption also depends on the length and composition of oligonucleotide. The protective effects of both single and double stranded DNA against salt-induced aggregation dramatically increase as the DNA length increases. In contrast to other available reports, we observed that long oligonucleotides (single-stranded and double stranded) can well be adsorbed on the nanoparticles as the short ones leading to almost complete protection of nanoparticles against salt induced aggregation and hence are not suitable for the sensing applications. Finally, the light scattering from the Ag nanoparticles has been simulated and the results compared with the experiments. Our understanding should improve development of colorimetric assays for DNA detection based on aggregation of unmodified metallic nanoparticles.