Developing Virus-like Particles as High-density Photoreporting Platforms using Noncanonical Amino Acids and Click Chemistry

Salt Lake Community College Student Center

Light-based imaging and microscopy techniques are compelling diagnostic tools that provide straightforward data. Furthermore, single-particle targeting and tracking has the potential to provide new insight on myriad phenomenon, such as small particle diffusion, particle-membrane interaction, single-particle microfluidics, and many aspects of microbiology and physiology. However, limitations exist in current technologies’ ability to achieve tracking of individual nanoparticles due to inability to sufficiently label or stain single targets with traditional probes. This work proposes a method to overcome probe density by creating individual probes based on virus-based nanoparticles densely decorated with many reporter probes. We present the steps to produce such reporters. This technology has the potential to provide insight into single particle pathways that might otherwise only be measured with bulk properties such as single-particle dynamics in microgravity.