DNA Terminal-Specific Dispersion Behavior of Polystyrene Latex Microparticles Densely Covered with Oligo-DNA Strands Under High-Salt Conditions

Abstract

We prepared microspheres densely covered with oligo-DNA strands by immobilizing amino-terminated oligo-DNA strands on the surface of carboxylate polystyrene latex (PS) particles via the amide bond formation. The obtained microspheres (ssDNA-PS) stably dispersed in neutral pH buffer containing high concentrations of NaCl. For the ssDNA-PS >1 µm diameter, only 3 - 5% of surface-immobilized oligo-DNA could form a duplex with the complementary strands. Nevertheless, the resulting ssDNA-PS showed a distinct duplex terminal dependency in their dispersion behavior under neutral pH and high NaCl conditions; the microspheres with fully-matched duplexes on the surface spontaneously aggregated in a non-crosslinking manner. By contrast, the microspheres with terminal-mismatched duplexes remained dispersed under the identical conditions. These results suggest that the micrometer-scale particles covered with oligoDNA strands also have high susceptibility to a duplex terminal sequence in their dispersion property, similar to previously reported DNA-functionalized nanoparticles. This property could potentially be used in various applications including analytical purposes.