In recent years, nanotechnology has emerged as an exciting scientific discipline with far-reaching applications. One particular interest to members in the scientific community is the use of nanoparticles in biological systems. Nanoparticles can be implemented in novel drug delivery systems in addition to other medically relevant applications. Factors that influence interactions between nanoparticles and proteins are currently under investigation. Developing a functional knowledge of these interactions can be used to generate nanoparticles compatible with biological environments. Although interactions between nanoparticles and proteins have been investigated recently, the specific interaction between nanoparticles and aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases remained unexplored. Aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases (AARS) are enzymes responsible for attaching amino acids to a conjugate tRNA molecule. The central research interest in our group over the past few years has been elucidating the structure-dynamic-function relationship in one of the twenty aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases in E. coli: prolyl-tRNA synthetize (ProRS). Potential changes in conformation and function of E. coli ProRS in the presence of nanoparticles, supplemented by data from intrinsic fluorescence spectroscopy and kinetic data from non-radioactive malachite green kinetic assays will be presented.

Investigation of the effect of gold nanoparticles on the structure and catalytic function of Escherichia coli prolyl-tRNA synthetases

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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