(299e) High-Throughput Evolution of Near-Infrared Oxytocin Nanosensors

Neuropeptides act broadly as neurotransmitters, neurohormones, and neuromodulators throughout the body, implicating these macromolecules in a variety of physiological processes and their dysfunction in multiple neurological disorders and neurodegenerative diseases. Neuropeptide imaging can provide insight into their signaling pathways and spatiotemporal dynamics thus connecting their broad activity to both function and pathology. It is of great interest, then, to develop tools with the requisite metrics to enable in vivo neuropeptide imaging in the brain. Synthetic nanoparticles offer relatively simple design and synthesis, facile signal readout, and rapid detection response along with orthogonality to biological processes. Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) are one-dimensional nanomaterials with intrinsic near-infrared fluorescence, whose surface modification with amphiphilic polymers confers analyte-specific sensing capabilities. Herein, we present on the results of high-throughput identification of DNA-SWCNT conjugates with high oxytocin affinity, and characterize these constructs for in vitro response to oxytocin.