A gold nanosphere in water is considered to attain special stability in derivatization like an artificial atom when the octet rule is satisfied by forming four covalent bonds with two 5 '-phosphorothioate-modified oligonucleotide molecules. Owing to this, the hybridization of two Mutually complementary gold-bound oligonucleotides makes gold nanospheres preferentially connected linearly by duplexes to produce strands like linear artificial molecules. We have then fixated the linear strands of DNA-linked gold nanospheres by reducing Ag+ ion clusters immobilized around duplexes to show the absorption spectrum of silver-coated artificial-molecular nanorods. (c) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.