Tuning the Gold Nanoparticle Colorimetric Assay by Nanoparticle Size, Concentration, and Size Combinations for Oligonucleotide Detection.

Gold nanoparticle (GNP)-based aggregation assay is simple, fast, and employs a colorimetric detection method. Although previous studies have reported using GNP-based colorimetric assay to detect biological and chemical targets, a mechanistic and quantitative understanding of the assay and effects of GNP parameters on the assay performance is lacking. In this work, we investigated this important aspect of the GNP aggregation assay including effects of GNP concentration and size on the assay performance to detect malarial DNA.