ASSESSING THE BIOLOGICAL ACTIVITIES OF DNA-TEMPLATED SILVER NANOCLUSTERS AND FURTHERING THE CHARACTERIZATION OF NUCLEIC ACID NANOPARTICLES

DNA and RNA are structurally and functionally diverse biopolymers that have shown promise in recent years as a powerful biomedical tool, in the form of nucleic acid nanotechnologies. The applications of these technologies include biosensing, diagnostics, cancer therapeutics, vaccines, and many more. A relatively unexplored area to which nucleic acid nanotechnology is being applied is the field of antibacterial research. By combining short DNA oligos with silver cations, folding the DNA into its proper secondary and tertiary structures, then reducing the silver, DNA may template the formation of few-atom silver nanoclusters (AgNCs). Silver has been well understood for centuries to be an effective antibacterial agent. Many silver nanostructures have been investigated for their potential efficacy as antibiotics. DNA-AgNCs have been shown to be effective at preventing bacterial growth in a variety of conditions. A unique advantage of DNA-AgNCs is that, unlike many larger silver nanostructures which typically absorb light through surface plasmon resonance, AgNCs fluoresce in a manner dependent on the sequence and structure of the templating oligonucleotide(s). Due to the unique structure-function relationship of AgNCs, further investigation of their structure is warranted. Presented herein is a thorough review of silver nanomaterials, along with work demonstrating the effectiveness of a DNA-AgNC hairpin system against a model E. coli system, and the characterization of an RNA ring which may serve as the scaffold for a multitude of functionalities, including DNA-AgNCs, in preparation for future work.