Fluorescent conjugated polyelectrolytes (CPEs) interact with proteins in aqueous solution, and these interactions give rise to an optical response, such as absorption shifts and fluorescence intensity quenching or enhancement. Fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) has been developed as a novel method to study the effect of CPE-protein interactions on the solution state of the polymer. FCS provides information concerning the effective size of the fluorescent protein-CPE assembly. Studies using CPEs with different charge type and with different proteins reveal that the protein-CPE assembly size is sensitive to the pI value of the protein and the charge on the CPE. By applying linear discriminant analysis methods it is possible to uniquely identify proteins from measurement of the FCS diffusion time with a set of CPEs.

Interactions of conjugated polyelectrolytes with proteins: Fundamentals and application to protein sensing

247th National Meeting (2014)

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