Adenine oligomer directed synthesis of chiral gold nanoparticles

Nat Commun. 2022 Jul 2;13(1):3831. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-31513-y.

Abstract

Precise control of morphology and optical response of 3-dimensional chiral nanoparticles remain as a significant challenge. This work demonstrates chiral gold nanoparticle synthesis using single-stranded oligonucleotide as a chiral shape modifier. The homo-oligonucleotide composed of Adenine nucleobase specifically show a distinct chirality development with a dissymmetric factor up to g ~ 0.04 at visible wavelength, whereas other nucleobases show no development of chirality. The synthesized nanoparticle shows a counter-clockwise rotation of generated chiral arms with approximately 200 nm edge length. The molecular dynamics and density functional theory simulations reveal that Adenine shows the highest enantioselective interaction with Au(321)R/S facet in terms of binding orientation and affinity. This is attributed to the formation of sequence-specific intra-strand hydrogen bonding between nucleobases. We also found that different sequence programming of Adenine-and Cytosine-based oligomers result in chiral gold nanoparticles' morphological and optical change. These results extend our understanding of the biomolecule-directed synthesis of chiral gold nanoparticles to sequence programmable deoxyribonucleic acid and provides a foundation for programmable synthesis of chiral gold nanoparticles.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adenine
  • Gold* / chemistry
  • Metal Nanoparticles* / chemistry
  • Oligonucleotides

Substances

  • Oligonucleotides
  • Gold
  • Adenine