With the advent of a variety of novel nanometer-scale diagnostic techniques such as DNA micro- and nanoarrays, increasing focus has been placed on developing methods to quickly and accurately create these nanometer scale patterns. One promising technique for depositing DNA, proteins, and other liquid molecular "inks" with submicron resolution is...
Magnetic nanostructures (MNS) have become the subject of intense
interest due to their superparamagnetic properties and consequently
their potential uses in medical diagnostics and therapeutics. In this
study, monodisperse magnetite MNSs were synthesized via thermal
decomposition of iron(III) acetylacetonate and transferred to aqueous
solution using 11-aminoundecanoic acid as the surfactant....
Neurons are difficult to manipulate experimentally. Most transfection
reagents used for gene silencing are neurotoxic, and the postmitotic
state of neurons prevents the effective use of viral vectors. This study
demonstrated the delivery of antisense DNA against target genes by
gold nanoparticle oligonucleotide complexes (GNOs) in primary cultures
of rat...
This paper investigates the use of self-assembled monolayers
(SAMs) to optimize the localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR)
biosensor for disease detection. Various experiments were done
with 1-(9-mercaptononyl)-3,6,9-trioxaundecan-11-ol (TDT) and
heptaoxatricosanoic acid (HSA), a new SAM; these included a solvent
study to determine refractive index sensitivity and nonspecific binding
and specific...
This paper reports the syntheses of acetylene-terminated smallmolecule
cores. Also reported are successful attempts at “click”
coupling the core molecules with azide-terminated oligonucleotides to
construct stable small-molecule DNA hybrids (SMDH). Once these
click-based small-molecule DNA hybrids are formed, melting studies
will be done that study how the geometry of SMDH...
Semiconductor nanowires show promise for application in nanoscale
electronics, but the difficulty of forming low-resistance ohmic contacts
provides a challenge to their implementation. To improve the electrical
performance of lithographically defined nickel contacts, nickel-silicide/
silicon axial nanowire heterostructures were formed by controlled
partial silicidation. Prior to annealing, two-terminal silicon nanowire...
Small, soluble, self-assembling peptide Aβ-oligomers, known as ADDLs
(amyloid-derived diffusible ligands), accumulate in the Alzheimer’s
disease (AD) brain as Aβ 12-mers and are thought to contribute to AD
neuropathological conditions. Unlike plaques, which were once thought
to cause neuronal death due to insoluble amyloid plaque deposits,
ADDLs initiate abnormal changes...
In the field of clinical diagnostics, biosensors are used to identify genetic
disorders by hybridizing a surface-bound DNA sequence with the
patient’s DNA. To further improve biosensor design, two nonlinear
optical techniques, sum frequency generation (SFG) and second
harmonic generation (SHG), were used to probe the orientation,
chirality, and surface...
The formation of organic layers on hydrogen-passivated silicon (HPS)
surfaces via (UV) ultraviolet treatment was completed for three styrene
derivatives with different conjugated lengths. The styrene molecules
were synthesized and characterized using nuclear magnetic resonance
(NMR) spectroscopy and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry
(GC-MS). Layer formation on silicon was then accomplished through...