Every year our institute awards the “best paper” published during the previous year. Six papers are awarded: A winner, a runner-up, a third place and three mentions. This year the paper “Antibody modified gold nanoparticles for fast and selective, colorimetric T7 bacteriophage detection” (Bioconjugate Chem. 25, 644-648 (2014)) was one of the three mentioned papers.
As the title suggests the paper is about colorimetric detection of bacteriophages. It works by modifying gold nanoparticles with anti-bodies that bind specifically to a certain bacteriophage. When this phage, in our case T7, is present in the sample the gold particles aggregate which leads to a change in the plasmon resonance of the particles and a change in colour of the solution. Even with relatively modest concentrations of T7 the change is visible to the naked eye.
The work is mostly the effort of Adam Leśniewski and Joanna Niedziółka-Jönsson from our neighbouring group, but Martin had a small part in the paper as well.
