Adsorption of Oligonucleotides on Quantum Dots Coated with Zwitterionic Ligands and other Water-soluble Ligands
A strategy to ameliorate non-specific adsorption of oligonucleotides onto Quantum Dots (QDs) is investigated where QDs are being used as a platform for the development of optical bioprobes for nucleic acid detection. Certain zwitterionic structures as coatings on QDs have recently been shown to redu...
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| Language: | en_ca |
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2012
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1807/32604 |
| Summary: | A strategy to ameliorate non-specific adsorption of oligonucleotides onto Quantum Dots (QDs) is investigated where QDs are being used as a platform for the development of optical bioprobes for nucleic acid detection. Certain zwitterionic structures as coatings on QDs have recently been shown to reduce non-specific binding of proteins. In this thesis, a lysine side chain is attached to a dihydrolipoic acid (DHLA) derivative to create a zwitterionic bidentate ligand that has primary amine and carboxyl termini. Such coatings on CdSe/ZnS QDs were studied to assess adsorption of oligonucleotides across a range of pH to better understand the relationship between surface charge and adsorption. The change of pKa of charged terminal groups on QD surfaces for a variety of different water soluble ligands were evaluated using pseudo-titration curves, and indicated up to 3 orders of magnitude shift of pKa at a QD surface in comparison to pKa in bulk solution. |
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