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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2014 Oct 17.
Published in final edited form as: Anal Chem. 2011 Jul 13;83(15):5957–5964. doi: 10.1021/ac201321m

Figure 1.

Figure 1

Representation of the strand exchange process using the bifunctional sensor strand with a template sequence for the silver cluster (blue) and a recognition site (green) for the target strand (red). The bridging quencher strand (black) statically quenches emission from a fraction of the clusters bound to the DNA host. After the quencher is displaced by the target, emission from the near-infrared emissive silver cluster is enhanced by a proportional increase in the number of emitting species. This population shift could be associated with a greater accessibility of the favored cluster binding site when the target binds.