By Irene Hsiao
Nucleic acid amplification, used in PCR and other methods, involves a cycle of heating and cooling that is both time-consuming and expensive. In "Plasmonic Photothermal Gold Bipyramid Nanoreactors for Ultra-Fast Real Time Bioassays," the cover story of JACS on 21 June 2017, Yossi Weizmann and colleagues use gold bipyramidal nanoparticles and LEDs for rapid, low-energy thermocycling to produce consistent amplification of nucleic acids, a method that holds great promise as a tool in biomedical research.