Final Activity Report Summary - LISA (and there was Light, Silver and dnA) In the LISA project the idea is to characterise bacterial DNA from clinical samples using silver nanoparticle enhanced light spectroscopy (called surface enhanced resonance Raman spectroscopy). LISA stands for "and there was Light Silver and dnA". Three Marie Curie Fellows have worked on the project. Fellow 1 - Andrew Derome has worked on a 3-plex SERRS assay after PCR from real clinical samples using new biotin-avidin clean technology. Fellow 2 - Ron Gill developed a simplified assay based on the DNA-induced aggregation of CTAB-coated silver nanoparticles. Also Ron Gill has researched and optimised conditions to get enhancement of fluorescence rather than Raman signal. Using such conditions fluorescence enhancement observed was comparable or even better than the best published results for surface enhanced fluorescence. The MC fellow has adapted the synthesis of silver colloids for small volumes (1ml) in glass tubes using a thermomixer (usually used in biology for doing heating reactions in eppendorf tubes). In that way it is much easier to do a large number of synthesis in parallel with different reactants concentrations. Fellow 3 - Gwenola Sabatte transferred knowledge in SERRS active anti-body conjugates for enrichment and elution methods for enrichment applications. She investigated silver and gold coated magnetic particles for magnetic beads immunoassays and also worked on optimisation of enrichment via elution for magnetic beads immunoassays. The final work she performed on the development of a protein enrichment assay.
