The Fluorescent Palette of DNA-Templated Silver Nanoclusters for Biological Applications

Min Yang; Xu Chen; Yuan Su; Haiyan Liu; Hongxing Zhang; Xiangyang Li; Wentao Xu

doi:10.3389/fchem.2020.601621

The Fluorescent Palette of DNA-Templated Silver Nanoclusters for Biological Applications

Front Chem. 2020 Nov 11:8:601621. doi: 10.3389/fchem.2020.601621. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Min Yang¹, Xu Chen², Yuan Su², Haiyan Liu³, Hongxing Zhang¹, Xiangyang Li¹, Wentao Xu²

Affiliations

¹ Beijing Laboratory of Food Quality and Safety, Beijing Key Laboratory of Agricultural Product Detection and Control of Spoilage Organisms and Pesticide Residue, Faculty of Food Science and Engineering, Beijing University of Agriculture, Beijing, China.
² Institute of Nutrition and Health, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China.
³ Faculty of Public Health, North China University of Technology, Tangshan, China.

Abstract

Recently years have witnessed a surge in application of DNA-AgNCs in optics, catalysis, sensing, and biomedicine. DNA-templated silver nanoclusters (DNA-AgNCs), as emerging fluorophores, display superior optical performance since their size is close to the Fermi wavelength. DNA-AgNCs possess unique features, including high fluorescence quantum yields and stability, biocompatibility, facile synthesis, and low toxicity, which are requisite for fluorescent probes. The fluorescent emission of DNA-AgNCs can cover the violet to near-infrared (NIR) region by varying the DNA sequences, lengths, and structures or by modifying the environmental factors (such as buffer, pH, metal ions, macromolecular polymers, and small molecules). In view of the above excellent properties, we overview the DNA-AgNCs from the viewpoints of synthesis and fluorescence properties, and summarized its biological applications of fluorescence sensing and imaging.

Keywords: DNA-templated silver nanoclusters; fluorescent probing; imaging; noble metal nanoclusters; sensing.

Publication types

Review