This Career Advancement Award is supported by the Analytical and Surface Chemistry Program. Professor Georgiadis and her students at Boston University will study the interactions and properties of nucleic acids at interfaces using in situ two-color surface plasmon resonance spectroscopy. Self-assembled monolayers of oligonucleotides on surfaces and the factors that control hybridization selectivity in DNA and peptide nucleic acid films will be studied. This work has potential for developing extended DNA arrays that will be useful in studies DNA-drug interactions. Monolayers of biomolecules on surfaces will be studied by an extremely sensitive surface spectroscopic method, surface plasmon resonance spectroscopy, using two colors of light. This new method has been developed in this laboratory. The properties of the biomolecules as they interact with compounds that are candidates for drugs will be measured and used to understand these chemical reactions. This information will also be useful in developing rapid nucleotide sequencing data for DNA and other nucleic acids.
