Biomolecular-Mediated Plasmonic Sensors for Chemical and Biosensing in Complex Media

化学和生物传感器在医学生物诊断、国家安全、环境保护和农业质量控制等领域具有重要意义。已经探索了一系列传感技术，但许多传感平台的一个缺点是来自干扰物种的假阳性反应。最常见的是通过纯化过程或通过采用表面修饰来防止非特异性结合相互作用来减少对检测的干扰。解决这一挑战的新方法可以降低传感器的成本和复杂性，缩短分析时间，并避免需要合成要求的化学品来提供无污染的表面特性。我们的研究旨在通过将构象适应性生物分子与等离子体纳米材料相结合来实现设计的光学响应，以区分目标分析物和干扰分子。光学性质的产生源于紧密相连的纳米粒子之间的耦合作用，以及纳米粒子的形状和尺寸的变化。重要的是，区分干扰物种的靶标结合和非特异性吸附将是可能的，因为竞争过程产生的光学信号在物理上是不同的。通过探索可以与各种分析物结合的工程化生物分子，这些光学活性生物纳米材料将被开发用于筛选潜在的药物分子，监测细胞过程中的局部化学环境，并作为现场检测的经济便携诊断工具。

Chemical and biological sensors are important in diverse fields including medical biodiagnostics, national security, environmental protection and agriculture quality control. A range of sensing techniques has been explored but one shortcoming of many sensing platforms is the false positive response from interfering species. Interference in an assay is most commonly reduced by purification processes or by employing surface modifications that prevent non-specific binding interactions. New approach to address this challenge can decrease the cost and complexity of the sensor, shorten the time of analysis and circumvent the need of synthetically demanding chemicals for providing non-fouling surface properties. Our research aims to achieve designed optical response that will differentiate between target analyte from interfering molecules by integrating conformational adaptive biomolecules with plasmonic nanomaterials. The optical properties will arise from the coupling interaction of closely-linked nanoparticles, and changes in the shapes and sizes of the nanoparticles. Importantly, discriminating between target binding and non-specific adsorption of interfering species will be possible because the optical signals generated by the competing processes will be physically different. By exploring engineered biomolecules that can bind to a variety of analytes, these optically active bio-nanomaterials will be developed for screening potential drug molecules, monitoring local chemical environment in cellular processes, and as economical portable diagnostics for on-site field-based detections.