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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2011 Jul 21.
Published in final edited form as: J Am Chem Soc. 2010 Jul 21;132(28):9789–9796. doi: 10.1021/ja102585v

Figure 1.

Figure 1

Hairpin DNA functionalized gold nanoparticles (hAuNP) for detection of mRNA in live cells. Hairpin DNA is coupled to the gold colloid surface VIA a 5′ thiol, thereby quenching fluorescence emission of the 3′ fluorophore (red). The stem regions (pink) maintain the hairpin conformation through complementary hydrogen bonding. Hybridization between the loop region (black) and the target DNA or RNA sequence (blue) results in opening of the hairpin DNA and fluorescence emission.