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Spherical Nucleic Acids
Spherical nucleic acids (SNAs) are nanostructures that consist of a densely packed, highly oriented arrangement of linear nucleic acids in a three-dimensional, spherical geometry. This novel three-dimensional architecture is responsible for many of the SNA's novel chemical, biological, and physical properties that make it useful in biomedicine and materials synthesis. SNAs were first introduced in 1996 by Chad Mirkin’s group at Northwestern University. Structure and function The SNA structure typically consists of two components: a nanoparticle core and a nucleic acid shell. The nucleic acid shell is made up of short, synthetic oligonucleotides terminated with a functional group that can be utilized to attach them to the nanoparticle core. The dense loading of nucleic acids on the particle surface results in a characteristic radial orientation around the nanoparticle core, which minimizes repulsion between the negatively charged oligonucleotides. The first SNA consisted of a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Classes Of Nucleic Acids
Class or The Class may refer to: Common uses not otherwise categorized * Class (biology), a taxonomic rank * Class (knowledge representation), a collection of individuals or objects * Class (philosophy), an analytical concept used differently from such group phenomena as "types" or "kinds" * Class (set theory), a collection of sets that can be unambiguously defined by a property that all its members share * Hazard class, a dangerous goods classification * Social class, the hierarchical arrangement of individuals in society, usually defined by wealth and occupation * Working class, can be defined by rank, income or collar Arts, entertainment, and media * "The Class" (song), 1959 Chubby Checker song * Character class in role-playing games and other genres * Class 95 (radio station), a Singaporean radio channel Films * ''Class'' (film), 1983 American film * ''The Class'' (2007 film), 2007 Estonian film * ''The Class'' (2008 film), 2008 film (''Entre les murs'') Television * '' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plasmids
A plasmid is a small, extrachromosomal DNA molecule within a cell that is physically separated from chromosomal DNA and can replicate independently. They are most commonly found as small circular, double-stranded DNA molecules in bacteria; however, plasmids are sometimes present in archaea and eukaryotic organisms. In nature, plasmids often carry genes that benefit the survival of the organism and confer selective advantage such as antibiotic resistance. While chromosomes are large and contain all the essential genetic information for living under normal conditions, plasmids are usually very small and contain only additional genes that may be useful in certain situations or conditions. Artificial plasmids are widely used as vectors in molecular cloning, serving to drive the replication of recombinant DNA sequences within host organisms. In the laboratory, plasmids may be introduced into a cell via transformation. Synthetic plasmids are available for procurement over the intern ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
RNAi
RNA interference (RNAi) is a biological process in which RNA molecules are involved in sequence-specific suppression of gene expression by double-stranded RNA, through translational or transcriptional repression. Historically, RNAi was known by other names, including ''co-suppression'', ''post-transcriptional gene silencing'' (PTGS), and ''quelling''. The detailed study of each of these seemingly different processes elucidated that the identity of these phenomena were all actually RNAi. Andrew Fire and Craig C. Mello shared the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work on RNAi in the nematode worm ''Caenorhabditis elegans'', which they published in 1998. Since the discovery of RNAi and its regulatory potentials, it has become evident that RNAi has immense potential in suppression of desired genes. RNAi is now known as precise, efficient, stable and better than antisense therapy for gene suppression. Antisense RNA produced intracellularly by an expression vector ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antisense
In molecular biology and genetics, the sense of a nucleic acid molecule, particularly of a strand of DNA or RNA, refers to the nature of the roles of the strand and its complement in specifying a sequence of amino acids. Depending on the context, sense may have slightly different meanings. For example, negative-sense strand of DNA is equivalent to the template strand, whereas the positive-sense strand is the non-template strand whose nucleotide sequence is equivalent to the sequence of the mRNA transcript. DNA sense Because of the complementary nature of base-pairing between nucleic acid polymers, a double-stranded DNA molecule will be composed of two strands with sequences that are reverse complements of each other. To help molecular biologists specifically identify each strand individually, the two strands are usually differentiated as the "sense" strand and the "antisense" strand. An individual strand of DNA is referred to as positive-sense (also positive (+) or simply sense) i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anisotropic
Anisotropy () is the property of a material which allows it to change or assume different properties in different directions, as opposed to isotropy. It can be defined as a difference, when measured along different axes, in a material's physical or mechanical properties (absorbance, refractive index, conductivity, tensile strength, etc.). An example of anisotropy is light coming through a polarizer. Another is wood, which is easier to split along its grain than across it. Fields of interest Computer graphics In the field of computer graphics, an anisotropic surface changes in appearance as it rotates about its geometric normal, as is the case with velvet. Anisotropic filtering (AF) is a method of enhancing the image quality of textures on surfaces that are far away and steeply angled with respect to the point of view. Older techniques, such as bilinear and trilinear filtering, do not take into account the angle a surface is viewed from, which can result in aliasing or bl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
DNA Origami
DNA origami is the nanoscale folding of DNA to create arbitrary two- and three-dimensional shapes at the nanoscale. The specificity of the interactions between complementary base pairs make DNA a useful construction material, through design of its base sequences. DNA is a well-understood material that is suitable for creating scaffolds that hold other molecules in place or to create structures all on its own. DNA origami was the cover story of ''Nature'' on March 16, 2006. Since then, DNA origami has progressed past an art form and has found a number of applications from drug delivery systems to uses as circuitry in plasmonic devices; however, most commercial applications remain in a concept or testing phase. Overview The idea of using DNA as a construction material was first introduced in the early 1980s by Nadrian Seeman. The current method of DNA origami was developed by Paul Rothemund at the California Institute of Technology. The process involves the folding of a long si ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
DNA Nanotechnology
DNA nanotechnology is the design and manufacture of artificial nucleic acid structures for technological uses. In this field, nucleic acids are used as non-biological engineering materials for nanotechnology rather than as the carriers of genetic information in living cells. Researchers in the field have created static structures such as two- and three-dimensional crystal lattices, nanotubes, polyhedra, and arbitrary shapes, and functional devices such as molecular machines and DNA computers. The field is beginning to be used as a tool to solve basic science problems in structural biology and biophysics, including applications in X-ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy of proteins to determine structures. Potential applications in molecular scale electronics and nanomedicine are also being investigated. The conceptual foundation for DNA nanotechnology was first laid out by Nadrian Seeman in the early 1980s, and the field began to attract widespread int ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polyvalent DNA Gold Nanoparticles
Polyvalent DNA gold nanoparticles, now more commonly referred to as spherical nucleic acids, (Fig. 1) are colloidal gold particles densely modified with short (typically ~30-mer or less), highly oriented, synthetic DNA strands. They were invented by Chad Mirkin et al. at Northwestern University in 1996. Paul Alivisatos et al. at the University of California, Berkeley introduced a related monovalent structure the same year. Due to the strong interaction between gold and thiols (-SH), the first polyvalent DNA gold nanoparticles were obtained by capping the gold nanoparticles with a dense monolayer of thiol-modified DNA. The dense packing and negative charge of the phosphate backbones of DNA orients it into solution (like a “koosh ball”) with a footprint that is dependent on factors including the particle size and radius of curvature. Properties and Applications The three-dimensional structure of the DNA shell imparts upon these conjugates novel chemical, physical, and biologic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polyvalency
In chemistry, polyvalency (or polyvalence, multivalency) is the property of chemical species (generally atoms or molecules) that exhibit more than one valence by forming multiple chemical bonds (Fig. 1). A bivalent species can form two bonds; a trivalent species can form three bonds; and so on. The principle of polyvalency also applies to larger species, such as antibodies, medical drugs, and even nanoparticles surface-functionalized with ligands, like spherical nucleic acids Spherical nucleic acids (SNAs) are nanostructures that consist of a densely packed, highly oriented arrangement of linear nucleic acids in a three-dimensional, spherical geometry. This novel three-dimensional architecture is responsible for many o ..., which can show enhanced or cooperative binding compared to their monovalent counterparts. Nanoparticles with multiple nucleic acid strands on their surfaces (e.g., DNA) can form multiple bonds with one another by DNA hybridization to form hierarchical a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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