Applications of gold nanoparticles in virus detection

Draz, Mohamed Shehata; Shafiee, Hadi

The concept of nanotechnology was introduced in early 1959 [36] . Subsequently, nanotechnology was realized via various types of new materials that rapidly emerged as promising tools for biological and chemical analyses. Nanomaterials are known to possess multiple unique optical, electronic, magnetic, and mechanical properties enabling very attractive applications, especially in the fields of biomedical imaging and clinical diagnosis [37, 38] . The first reported application of nanomaterials in the detection of viruses was attempted in the late 1990s: AuNPs were coupled with silver staining and applied for the detection of human papillomavirus in cervical carcinoma cells (Fig. l) [39] . Currently, there is a very wide range of nanomaterials, including metal NPs, carbon nanotubes, silica NPs, quantum dots (QDs), upconversion NPs, and polymeric NPs, that are being heavily investigated for virus detection [37, 38, 40] . One of the most common approaches for exploiting these nanostructures in virus detection is the development of nanobio hybrid systems that contain one or more biomolecules derived from viruses (e.g., DNA, RNA, antibody, pentabody, antigen, or peptide) conjugated to the surface of different NP forms. These systems leverage the significant labeling properties and signal transduction functions of NPs and the specific activity of the conjugated biomolecules to act as multivalent-NP probes [37, 38, 41] . Such virus-specific NP probes have surprisingly been used to build up various optical, fluorometric, electrochemical, and electrical assays that have been extensively reported for single and multiple detection modes ( Table 1 ). The results of most of these studies clearly demonstrate the inherent potential of these probes, along with numerous advantages over traditional approaches, in terms of size, performance, specificity, signal sensitivity, and stability. Additionally, these studies have extensively described their application to allow simple, rapid, highly sensitive and label-free detection.