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

化学和生物传感器在包括医学生物诊断、国家安全、环境保护和农业质量控制在内的各个领域都很重要。已经探索了一系列传感技术，但是许多传感平台的一个缺点是来自干扰物质的假阳性响应。测定中的干扰最常通过纯化过程或通过采用防止非特异性结合相互作用的表面修饰来减少。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高的化学品来提供无污染的表面特性。我们的研究旨在通过整合构象自适应生物分子与等离子体纳米材料，实现设计的光学响应，将目标分析物与干扰分子区分开来。这些光学性质是由紧密连接的纳米颗粒之间的耦合作用以及纳米颗粒形状和尺寸的变化引起的。重要的是，区分目标结合和干扰物质的非特异性吸附将是可能的，因为由竞争过程产生的光学信号将是物理上不同的。通过探索可以与各种分析物结合的工程生物分子，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，以及作为现场现场检测的经济便携式诊断仪。

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.