Journal of the American Chemical Society 2010-06-16

Development of a bioorthogonal and highly efficient conjugation method for quantum dots using tetrazine-norbornene cycloaddition.

Hee-Sun Han, Neal K Devaraj, Jungmin Lee, Scott A Hilderbrand, Ralph Weissleder, Moungi G Bawendi

Index: J. Am. Chem. Soc. 132 , 7838-7839, (2010)

Full Text: HTML

Abstract

We present a bioorthogonal and modular conjugation method for efficient coupling of organic dyes and biomolecules to quantum dots (QDs) using a norbornene-tetrazine cycloaddition. The use of noncoordinating functional groups combined with the rapid rate of the cycloaddition leads to highly efficient conjugation. We have applied this method to the in situ targeting of norbornene-coated QDs to live cancer cells labeled with tetrazine-modified proteins.