Protein Design for the Synthesis and Stabilization of Highly Fluorescent Quantum Dots
Protein Design for the Synthesis and Stabilization of Highly Fluorescent Quantum Dots
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DOI：
10.1021/acs.chemmater.0c01484
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发表时间：
2020-07-14
影响因子：
8.6
通讯作者：
Cortajarena, Aitziber L.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Aires, Antonio;Moller, Marco;Cortajarena, Aitziber L.
与常用的有机荧光染料相比，量子点（QD）由于其高的发射量子产率、优异的抗光漂白性、光稳定性和大的斯托克斯位移，目前被广泛研究作为用于生物医学应用的荧光探针。本研究介绍了一种蛋白质工程方法，将金属配位位点的可持续合成和稳定的生物相容性CdS量子点的蛋白质。所得蛋白质稳定的CdS量子点（Prot-QD）在37摄氏度下通过绿色水溶液途径产生，具有高度光致发光和光稳定性，保质期长，并且在生理条件下具有高稳定性。Prot-QD在细胞中显示出有效的内化和高荧光，即使在低剂量和生物相容性下。这项工作的重点是CdS量子点，因为这种组合物已被广泛研究，但这种方法可以很容易地转化为其他金属组合物的量子点。在这里，蛋白质设计成为一种有前途的方法，以产生蛋白质杂化纳米材料作为广泛适用的工具，在不同的应用，如发光器件，金属离子检测和生物医学应用。
Quantum dots (QDs) are presently studied intensively as fluorescent probes for biomedical applications due to their high emission quantum yield, excellent resistance to photobleaching, photostability, and large Stokes shift, when contrasted with commonly utilized organic fluorescent dyes. This study introduces a protein engineering approach to incorporate metal coordination sites for the sustainable synthesis and stabilization of biocompatible CdS QDs in proteins. The resulting protein-stabilized CdS QDs (Prot-QDs), generated by a green aqueous route at 37 degrees C, are highly photoluminescent and photostable, have a long shelf life, and present high stability under physiological conditions. The Prot-QDs showed effective internalization and high fluorescence in cells, even at low doses and biocompatibility. This work focuses on CdS QDs, since this composition has been extensively studied, however this approach could be easily translated to QDs with other metal composition. Here, protein design emerges as a promising approach to generate protein-hybrid nanomaterials as broadly applicable tools in different applications such as light-emitting devices, metal ion detection, and biomedical applications.