The conjugation of dye-labelled DNA oligonucleotides with gold nanorods has been widely explored for the development of multifunctional fluorescent nanoprobes. In a recent publication in Nanoscale, BERG-iBB researchers in collaboration with colleagues from Centro de Química Estrutural and Centro de Ciências do Mar show that the functionalization route is crucial to achieve enhanced emission in dye nano-assemblies based on gold nanorods. By using a tip-selective approach for thiol attachment of dye molecules onto gold nanorods, it was possible to effectively increase the emission by more than 10-fold relatively to that of free dye. The results could improve significantly the performance of dye nano-assemblies for imaging or sensing applications.The work is part of the PhD thesis of David Botequim, which is supervised by Pedro Paulo (CQE) and Miguel Prazeres (BERG-iBB).