A great deal of research has been focused on the assembly and disassembly of particles using DNA; however, the sequences are typically designed and thus have no genomic relevance. For the current research, DNA mediated assembly of colloidal particles has been designed based on a biologically relevant sequence of Salmonella, a common pathogen in food. Using both perfectly complementary sequences and sequences containing one base pair mismatch, DNA-linked colloidal micelles have been assembled. The colloidal micelles consist of a template 5 µm particle conjugated with multiple copies of probe DNA strands surrounded by a monolayer of 200 nm particles conjugated with multiple copies of the complementary sequence. The stability of these assemblies has been tuned by 1) varying the length of base pair matches in the hybridization segment or 2) incorporating a center base pair mismatch in the hybridization segment. Select assemblies are subject to dissociation of particles in the presence of competitive DNA strands. We believe that monitoring the disassembly of these colloidal micelles presents a facile, optical detection technique for the presence of Salmonella and other pathogens.