Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) have the potential to be used in disease diagnosis, imaging, and treatment, and their unique properties make them attractive research targets in medicine and beyond. While it is inevitable that increased medicinal and consumer use will result in these nanoparticles being introduced to the environment, little is known about how gold nanoparticles will interact with natural environments and each other. One of the unique properties of gold nanoparticles are their ability to be coated (“capped”) by a number of different molecules including polymers, surfactants, and proteins. Bovine Serum Albumin (BSA) was used as a model globular protein to investigate the effect that different environmental stimuli have on gold nanoparticles. It was found that the surface properties (including surface plasmon resonance peak, zeta potential, and hydrodynamic size) changed upon exposure to artificial sunlight and ultraviolet light, and that these changes differed when nanoparticles were suspended in different water systems. Notably, nanoparticles irradiated while suspended in a humic acid solution (to simulate a natural water system) showed the greatest stability under light irradiation. Finally, this research began to investigate if the protein conformation on the surface of the nanoparticle had an effect on the stability.

Surface chemistry of protein-capped gold nanoparticles

255th National Meeting (2018)

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