Molekül‐Detektive. Biosensoren

Biosensors are analytical devices incorporating biological material (receptor) intimately associated with or integrated within a physicochemical transducer. Advantages are the high selectivity for analyte detection. Examples given comprise the very successful commercial blood glucose biosensors made for the self‐control by the diabetic patients. Other biosensors are part of an analytic system, including the sensor chips of surface plasmon resonance or interferometry based devices, piezoelectric or reflectometric sensors capable of direct measurement of mass changes, and thermometric and other reagentless sensors. The development of nanotubes‐based devices allows for significant enhancment of the signal‐tonoise ratio of the biosensors. A milestone on the way towards miniaturization and parallelization of biosensors is the recently developed and prize‐winning electronic DNA chip.     

DNA‐Nanotechnologie

For the past two decades the extraordinary molecular recognition properties of DNA molecules have been used for the creation of artificial molecular structures. Following the initial production of simple molecular objects and lattices, with the recent invention of the DNA origami technique the complexity of these structures has considerably increased. Now the construction of almost arbitrary molecular nanostructures from DNA in two and even three dimensions is feasible – and first concrete applications in biomedicine and nanotechnology are in reach. In addition to static molecular structures, also dynamical systems such as molecular machines, molecular motors, and molecular computers can be realized. The combination of these functions within integrated systems currently leads to the development of first molecular “robots” and assembly lines for nanotechnology.     

Crystallization of DNA‐Capped Gold Nanoparticles in High‐Concentration,Divalent Salt Environments

The multiparametric nature of nanoparticle self‐assembly makes it challenging to circumvent the instabilities that lead to aggregation and achieve crystallization under extreme conditions. By using non‐base‐pairing DNA as a model ligand instead of the typical base‐pairing design for programmability, long‐range 2D DNA–gold nanoparticle crystals can be obtained at extremely high salt concentrations and in a divalent salt environment. The interparticle spacings in these 2D nanoparticle crystals can be engineered and further tuned based on an empirical model incorporating the parameters of ligand length and ionic strength.