Journal of Physical Chemistry C
Journal of Physical Chemistry C
5 years ago

Using SiO2-Coated Gold Nanorods as Temperature Jump Photothermal Convertors Coupled with a Confocal Fluorescent Thermometer to Study Protein Unfolding Kinetics: A Case of Bovine Serum Albumin

Using SiO2-Coated Gold Nanorods as Temperature Jump Photothermal Convertors Coupled with a Confocal Fluorescent Thermometer to Study Protein Unfolding Kinetics: A Case of Bovine Serum Albumin
Chia-Te Lin, Ke-Chia Tseng, Li-Kang Chu, Kuan-Jen Chen
Photoexcitation of SiO2-coated gold nanorods (AuNR@SiO2) with a 1064 nm pulse of ca. 100 μs duration leads to a temperature jump of 5 °C, as determined by the evolution of the fluorescence intensity of tryptophan. A confocal fluorescent thermometer was developed to detect the temperature evolution in a small excitation volume of ca. 10–3 mm3 and provide a spatial resolution of 100 μm. In addition, a continuous-wave laser at 1550 nm was employed to increase the initial temperature to 44 °C by heating H2O, providing alternative initial temperatures for temperature jump experiments to reveal the unfolding kinetics of bovine serum albumin (BSA). The evolution of fluorescence of BSA upon temperature jump when the stationary temperature was raised to 44 °C differed from that at room temperature, suggesting a dynamical unfolding kinetics, and a rate coefficient of 75 ± 15 s–1 was derived. In this work, we successfully demonstrated the applicability of AuNR@SiO2 as the photothermal material for the temperature jump and employment of a confocal fluorescent thermometer to precisely monitor the minuscule heating volume. It would be advantageous to utilize this apparatus as an alternative tool for studying the kinetics of protein unfolding.

Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpcc.7b05033

DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpcc.7b05033

You might also like
Discover & Discuss Important Research

Keeping up-to-date with research can feel impossible, with papers being published faster than you'll ever be able to read them. That's where Researcher comes in: we're simplifying discovery and making important discussions happen. With over 19,000 sources, including peer-reviewed journals, preprints, blogs, universities, podcasts and Live events across 10 research areas, you'll never miss what's important to you. It's like social media, but better. Oh, and we should mention - it's free.

  • Download from Google Play
  • Download from App Store
  • Download from AppInChina

Researcher displays publicly available abstracts and doesn’t host any full article content. If the content is open access, we will direct clicks from the abstracts to the publisher website and display the PDF copy on our platform. Clicks to view the full text will be directed to the publisher website, where only users with subscriptions or access through their institution are able to view the full article.