Table 1.

Characterizations of RNA functionalized gold nanoconstructs

core	SA (nm2)	# S / NP	# AS / NP	density #(S+AS) / nm2	size* (nm)	ζ-potential (mV)
13-nm spheres	531	60 ± 10	23 ± 8	0.16	29.2 ± 3.1	−28.8 ± 1.9
		151 ± 19	85 ± 8	0.44	29.7 ± 0.7	−31.6 ± 1.7
		208 ± 28	110 ± 10	0.60	32.0 ± 2.2	−35.2 ± 2.1
50-nm spheres	7840	397 ± 43	147 ± 12	0.07	72.0 ± 0.8	−34.2 ± 1.8
		780 ± 43	221 ± 34	0.13	63.9 ± 1.2	−35.5 ± 1.7
		962 ± 57	329 ± 42	0.16	64.3 ± 0.6	−31.0 ± 1.9
40-nm stars	7790	343 ± 35	122 ± 11	0.06	53.5 ± 0.4	−42.2 ± 1.1
		772 ± 39	251 ± 41	0.13	52.7 ± 1.1	−34.1 ± 1.7
		1071 ± 62	398 ± 56	0.19	50.4 ± 0.7	−39.0 ± 2.2

Surface area (SA) of 40-nm stars was estimated by methods using FITC-labeled PEG-SH (Supporting Information, Figure S1);

^#molecules of anti-sense (AS) and sense (S) strands per NP were determined by dissociating the oligonucleotides from AuNPs sequentially and quantifying each by analyzing the fluorescence of complexes of the strands with OliGreen;

^*hydrodynamic diameter was determined by dynamic light scattering (DLS)