Cantarutti, C; Bertoncin, P; Corazza, A; Giorgetti, S; Mangione, PP; Bellotti, V; Fogolari, F; Cantarutti, C; Bertoncin, P; Corazza, A; Giorgetti, S; Mangione, PP; Bellotti, V; Fogolari, F; Esposito, G; - view fewer (2017) Short-Chain Alkanethiol Coating for Small-Size Gold Nanoparticles Supporting Protein Stability. Magnetochemistry , 3 (4) , Article 40. 10.3390/magnetochemistry3040040.

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Abstract

The application of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) is emerging in many fields, raising the need for a systematic investigation on their safety. In particular, for biomedical purposes, a relevant issue are certainly AuNP interactions with biomolecules, among which proteins are the most abundant ones. Elucidating the effects of those interactions on protein structure and on nanoparticle stability is a major task towards understanding their mechanisms at a molecular level. We investigated the interaction of the 3-mercaptopropionic acid coating of AuNPs (MPA-AuNPs) with β2-microglobulin (β2m), which is a paradigmatic amyloidogenic protein. To this aim, we prepared and characterized MPA-AuNPs with an average diameter of 3.6 nm and we employed NMR spectroscopy and fluorescence spectroscopy to probe protein structure perturbations. We found that β2m interacts with MPA-AuNPs through a highly localized patch maintaining its overall native structure with minor conformational changes. The interaction causes the reversible precipitation of clusters that can be easily re-dispersed through brief sonication.

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