Friday, February 15, 2013

Thermally responsive silicon nanowire arrays for native/denatured-protein separation

Hongwei Wang, Yanwei Wang, Lin Yuan, Lei Wang, Weikang Yang, Zhaoqiang Wu, Dan Li and Hong Chen



We present our findings of the selective adsorption of native and denatured proteins onto thermally responsive, native-protein resistant poly( N -isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAAm) decorated silicon nanowire arrays (SiNWAs). The PNIPAAm–SiNWAs surface, which shows very low levels of native-protein adsorption, favors the adsorption of denatured proteins. The amount of denatured-protein adsorption is higher at temperatures above the lower critical solution temperature (LCST) of PNIPAAm. Temperature cycling surrounding the LCST, which ensures against thermal denaturation of native proteins, further increases the amount of denatured-protein adsorption. Moreover, the PNIPAAm–SiNWAs surface is able to selectively adsorb denatured protein even from mixtures of different protein species; meanwhile, the amount of native proteins in solution is kept nearly at its original level. It is believed that these results will not only enrich current understanding of protein interactions with PNIPA...



Link to full article

No comments:

Post a Comment