ISSN print edition: 0366-6352 ISSN electronic edition: 1336-9075 Registr. No.: MK SR 9/7 Published monthly

Monitoring fiber-like aggregation of collagen using gold nanoparticles as probes

Yanqiu Zhao, Wenjing Hu, Jizhen Kang, Xiaoning Lin, Benmei Wei, Juntao Zhang, Chengzhi Xu, and Haibo Wang

School of Food Science and Engineering, Wuhan Polytechnic University, Wuhan, China

E-mail: xuchengzhi@whpu.edu.cn

Received: 13 May 2021  Accepted: 11 October 2021

Abstract:

Fiber-like aggregation is characteristic of the collagen molecule and appears in all descriptions of collagen from its molecular behavior to the creation of novel materials. In this work, we developed a novel assay for monitoring collagen’s fiber-like aggregation using gold nanoparticles (GNPs) as probes. This strategy relies upon the distance-dependent optical properties of GNPs. In the absence of fiber-like aggregation, the GNPs were stabilized by collagen and did not aggregate in the presence of high salt. After fiber-like aggregation, the formation of the collagen fibril network induced the aggregation of GNPs, resulting in an increase of the maximal UV absorbance. Furthermore, control experiments confirmed that collagen fiber-like aggregation is a prerequisite for GNP aggregation. More importantly, the proposed assay displayed better accuracy and sensitivity than the traditional turbidity assay.

Keywords: Collagen; Fiber-like aggregation; Gold nanoparticles

Full paper is available at www.springerlink.com.

DOI: 10.1007/s11696-021-01935-x

Chemical Papers 76 (3) 1377–1384 (2022)