Room-Temperature Colorimetric Detection of Coralyne Using DNA-Functionalized Nanoparticle Probes

Coralyne is a crescent-shaped planar heterocyclic mole-cule that is capable of binding to duplex and triplex DNA. As a synthetic derivative of protoberberine alkaloids, coralyne exhibits powerful anticancer activity against P388 and L1210 leukemias in animal models such as mice.1 The potential medicinal impact of coralyne in cancer therapeutics is particularly attractive because of its relatively low toxicity, which has led to the deep investigation of its molecular interactions with nucleic acids and the synthetic develop-ment of various coralyne derivatives.2 One of the most important chemical and biological properties of coralyne is its molecular recognition of specific nucleic acids, or poly-adenine (poly-A), with a strong binding affinity (binding constant = 1.8 × 106 M−1) and a stoichiometry of one coralyne to four adenine bases.3-5 In fact, most mRN