Synthesis and Applications of Gold Nanoparticle Probes

During the last decade, gold nanoparticles (AuNPs)-based assays have been well developed and widely used in biological analysis and biomedical detections because AuNPs have unique physical and chemical properties, which are extremely sensitive to environmental conditions (e.g., size, shape, ligand, and degree of aggregation). In particular, the AuNPs-based assays have already been used for detecting practical samples with high simplicity and selectivity. This review discusses the recent development of the synthesis and biological molecular functionalization of AuNPs and their applications on cellular analysis and detections of the heavy metallic cations, small organic compounds, nucleic acids, and proteins.