Mechanism of the Effects of Gold Nanoparticles on Polymerase Chain Reaction Efficiency

Gold nanoparticles(AuNPs) have been found to greatly enhance the polymerase chain reaction(PCR) efficiency in recent studies.However,the underlying mechanism is still unclear,though several hypotheses have been proposed in previous studies.It was found that AuNPs enhanced the PCR efficiency in a concentration-dependent manner. However,the addition of DNA polymerase or bovine serum albumin(BSA) could eliminate the inhibitory effects of excess AuNPs.Based on these results we propose a possible mechanism that AuNPs might interact with polymerase in a manner analogous toβ-sliding clamp to modulate the activity of polymerase and improve PCR amplification;while the excess AuNPs binding to ssDNA to produce a steric effect might inhibit amplification efficiency.