Metal nanoparticle-based detection for DNA analysis

In the last 20 years the practice of DNA sequence detection has gained more and more importance in a variety of fields like-genetics, food safety, pathology, and criminology. This has been driven by the growing knowledge about the human and other organism's genome. The development of sophisticated technologies for the analysis of DNA makes the analysis of DNA faster and easier to use, and enable numerous researchers to take advantage of these techniques in their scientific work. An interesting alternative for the standard fluorescence labelling of DNA are metal nanoparticles. This paper reviews different detection schemes for using metal nanoparticles, and especially gold nanoparticles, as labels in DNA analysis. It covers various methods for the detection of nanoparticle labels taking advantage of their unique optical properties. Alternative methods are also described using electromechanical, electrochemical and electrical methods for the detection.