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Engineering Nanostructured Probes for Sensitive Intracellular Gene Detection

Gang Bao1, Andrew Tsourkas2, Philip J. Santangelo2

Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30332, (e-mail: gang.bao@bme.gatech.edu)
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30332

Molecular & Cellular Biomechanics 2004, 1(1), 23-36. https://doi.org/10.3970/mcb.2004.001.023

Abstract

The ability to detect, localize, quantify and monitor the expression of specific genes in living cells in real-time will offer unprecedented opportunities for advancement in molecular biology, disease pathophysiology, drug discovery, and medical diagnostics. However, current methods for quantifying gene expression employ either selective amplification (as in PCR) or saturation binding followed by removal of the excess probes (as in microarrays and in situ hybridization) to achieve specificity. Neither approach is applicable when detecting gene transcripts within living cells. Here we review the recent development in engineering nanostructured molecular probes for gene detection in vivo, describe probe design approaches and its structure-function relations, and discuss the critical issues and challenges in performing living cell gene detection with high specificity, sensitivity and signal-to-background ratio. The underlying biological and biochemical aspects are illustrated.

Cite This Article

Bao, G., Tsourkas, A., Santangelo, P. J. (2004). Engineering Nanostructured Probes for Sensitive Intracellular Gene Detection. Molecular & Cellular Biomechanics, 1(1), 23–36.



cc This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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