In situ analysis of nanoparticle soft corona and dynamic evolution

October 3, 2022

Title

In situ analysis of nanoparticle soft corona and dynamic evolution

Author

Didar Baimanov, Jing Wang, Jun Zhang, Ke Liu, Yalin Cong, Xiaomeng Shi, Xiaohui Zhang, Yufeng Li, Xiumin Li, Rongrong Qiao, Yuliang Zhao, Yunlong Zhou, Liming Wang & Chunying Chen

Year

2022

Journal

Nature Communications

Abstract

How soft corona, the protein corona’s outer layer, contributes to biological identity of nanomaterials is largely because capturing protein composition of the soft corona in situ remains challenging. We herein develop an in situ Fishing method that can monitor the dynamic formation of protein corona on ultra-small chiral Cu2S nanoparticles (NPs) allowing us to directly separate and identify the corona protein composition. Our method detects spatiotemporal processes in the evolution of hard and soft coronas on chiral NPs, revealing subtle differences in NP − protein interactions even within several minutes. This study highlights the importance of in situ and dynamic analysis of soft/hard corona, provides insights into the role of soft corona in mediating biological responses of NPs, and offers a universal strategy to characterize soft corona to guide the rational design of biomedical nanomaterials.

Instrument

J-1500

Keywords

nanoparticles, protein, interaction