Date of Award

1-1-2011

Document Type

Campus Access Thesis

Department

Chemistry and Biochemistry

Sub-Department

Chemistry

First Advisor

Qian Wang

Second Advisor

John Lavigne

Abstract

The formation of 1-dimensional inorganic architectures using biological particles as templates has led to the development of composite nanomaterial assemblies with well defined structures and compositions. This paper reports an improvement of the method of mineralization of viruses and virus-like particles based on a two-step chemical modification via click chemistry to introduce a pyridine-based ligand scaffold to the exterior of the protein surface of the tobacco mosaic virus (TMV). This ligand system shows an increase of the surface coverage of the virus, as well as highly ordered crystalline organization over large areas without the need for time consuming genetic modifications to the protein coat.

Quantum dots have been extensively studied for applications in cancer cell targeting, imaging, and drug delivery. Carbon-based quantum dots, or Selah Dots, were conjugated with fluorescent dye molecules to improve their fluorescent signal, and cell targeting ligands were conjugated to improve the cell targeting specificity. Preliminary results of cancer cell targeting show that conjugation of these ligands and fluorophores improve the target specificity and enhance the fluorescent signal.

Rights

© 2011, Jerry Richard Oxsher

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