The mission of the Symposium of University Research and Creative Expression (SOURCE) is to provide a university-wide forum for Central Washington University (CWU) students, encouraging equity, diversity, and inclusivity, representing all disciplines and experience levels, to present their mentored research, scholarship, and creative works in a juried environment that meets professional conference standards and expectations.
The 2022 SOURCE program is hybrid. Pre-recorded virtual talks are colored green and can be watched anytime. Live/in-person sessions with Zoom access can be found in the daily schedule. Thank you for joining us!
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Engineered nanoparticles (ENPs) have become common in industry and commercial products and have in recent years gained further attention for their possible diagnostic and therapeutic applications in biomedicine. These applications necessitate a thorough understanding of the behavior and interactions of ENPs in vivo. It is known that nanoparticles, when they enter the bloodstream, associate with serum proteins to varying degrees, resulting in different outcomes. These associations are driven by the characteristics of the nanoparticles including size, core composition, and surface chemistry. In this study, gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) of 5 nm diameter were synthesized with monolayers composed of a negatively-charged ligand (mercaptohexanoic acid, (MHA)), a neutral ligand (mercaptoethoxyethoxy ethanol (MEEE)), or a mixture of the two ligands, and used to investigate interactions with bovine serum albumin (BSA). Fluorescence titrations were conducted to determine binding affinity and it was found that the binding constants (Ka) for MHA, MEEE, and mixed-ligand AuNPs were 0.47 ± 0.02 nM-1, 0.40 ± 0.02 nM-1, and 0.48 ± 0.02 nM-1, respectively, indicating that the affinity of BSA for both MHA-capped and mixed-ligand AuNPs is higher than that for MEEE-capped AuNPs. The difference between MHA and MEEE-capped and between mixed-ligand and MEEE-capped AuNPs was statistically significant, whereas the difference between the mixed-ligand and MHA-capped AuNPs was not. Fluorescence studies were also used to determine the Hill coefficient n for the binding of BSA with each AuNP type. In all cases n was greater than 1, indicating cooperative binding of BSA molecules to the AuNP surface.
