Author(s)

Fuming Sang, Yang Yang, Hongyuan Wang, Xiaolei Ju, Zhizhou Zhang

Harbin Institute of Technology, School of Marine Science and Technology, Weihai, China.

Decent hot-start effects were here reported in Taq DNA polymerase-based polymerase chain reaction (PCR) when water-soluble CdTe quantum dots (QDs) were employed. The hot-start effects were revealed by the higher amplicon yields and distinguished suppression of nonspecific amplification after pre-incubation of PCR mix with quantum dots between 30°C and 56°C. DNA targets were well amplified even after PCR mixture was pre-incubated 3 hr at 30°C or 1 hr at 50°C. Importantly, the effects of QDs nanoparticles could be reversed by increasing the polymerase concentration, suggesting that there was an interaction between QDs and Taq DNA polymerase. Moreover, control experiment indicated that hot-start effect is not primarily due to the reduced polymerase concentration resulted from the above interaction. This study provided another good start to investigate potential implications of quantum dots in key molecular biology techniques.

Quantum Dots; Hot-Start; Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR); DNA; Taq DNA Polymerase

Sang, F. , Yang, Y. , Wang, H. , Ju, X. and Zhang, Z. (2012) Quantum dots induce hot-start effects for Taq-based polymerase chain reaction. Journal of Biomedical Science and Engineering, 5, 295-301. doi: 10.4236/jbise.2012.56038.