Highly sequence-dependent formation of fluorescent silver nanoclusters in hybridized DNA duplexes for single nucleotide mutation identification.

Fluorescent silver nanoclusters were successfully synthesized using hybridized DNA duplexes as capping scaffolds. The formation of these emitters was highly sequence-dependent and could specifically identify a single nucleotide mutation, the sickle cell anemia gene mutation. Furthermore, the identification of single-nucleotide differences using this strategy was extended to more general types of single-nucleotide mismatches.