Organosilica particles for DNA screening applications

Particle-based libraries for chemical screening are of interest for robust biochemical assays and molecular diagnostic applications. Silica particles are chemically stable and possess two separate chemical modification pathways that facilitate the attachment of fluorescent dyes for encoding purposes and specific oligonucleotides for hybridization assays. Characterization of surface modifications of the particles are presented and quantitation of oligonucleotide probes on the particle surface is described. The application of the particles in biological screening experiments is presented by means of a single base mismatch detection assay