2004/02/10 by D. B. Lukatsky, David B. Lukatsky, Daan Frenkel
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced biosensing and bioanalysis techniques #DNA and Nucleic Acid Chemistry #RNA Interference and Gene Delivery #cond-mat.soft #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.92.068302
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 068302 (2004)
openalex publication_date 2004/02/10 · arxiv created 2004/02/11 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
We propose a model that can account for the experimentally observed phase behavior of DNA-nanoparticle assemblies [J. Am. Chem. Soc. 125, 1643 (2003)]; Science 289, 1757 (2000)]]. The binding of DNA-coated nanoparticles by dissolved DNA linkers can be described by exploiting an analogy with quantum particles obeying fractional statistics. In accordance with experimental findings, we predict that the phase-separation temperature of the nanocolloids increases with the DNA coverage of the colloidal surface. Upon the addition of salt, the demixing temperature increases logarithmically with the salt concentration. Our analysis suggests an experimental strategy to map microscopic DNA sequences onto the macroscopic phase behavior of the DNA-nanoparticle solutions. Such an approach should enhance the efficiency of methods to detect (single) mutations in specific DNA sequences.