Iterative design of metallic nanoparticles towards the discovery of nano-bio interactions

背景：纳米材料的集成已经改变了许多科学领域的关键应用，如能源、环境技术、水、治疗和化学处理。金纳米颗粒是其中许多应用的中心。传统上，金纳米颗粒的物理性质，如大小和形状，都是为了改变性质和提高性能而设计的。在过去的5年里，我们的实验室合成了具有独特表面性质的星形金纳米颗粒，并表明了解纳米颗粒与生物膜如何相互作用可以导致新型传感器的开发。纳米材料工程的最新进展导致了具有金属纳米团簇的纳米结构的合成，并显示出在提高对目标分子的选择性方面的巨大潜力。这项建议旨在发现金属纳米颗粒和微生物细胞之间的相互作用，而不是使用Au结构。目标和科学方法：探索基金的长期目标是推动一项积极的研究计划，以加速发现金属纳米颗粒与微生物之间依赖于设计的相互作用。短期目标是1)研究合金纳米粒子与微生物的相互作用，2)发展一种朝着生物正交性方向迭代设计的金属纳米粒子。该计划将深入了解如何利用金属纳米颗粒检测微生物细胞，促进开发更多功能的病原体识别平台，并反过来将为开发更高分辨率的纳米材料传感器打开新的方向。新颖性和意义：这项工作将首次对合金金属进行全面调查，以产生用于生物产品和结构传感的“指纹”式相互作用。迭代设计的发现可以扩展到加速新材料和病原体传感器的发现。在拟议的工作中使用迭代设计方法可能会建立一个范例，其中使用渐进设计揭示对材料特性的基本见解，并指导系统设计和跨多个学科的工程。该研究项目还将为包括2名博士、2名硕士和6名孟加拉学生在内的高素质人才(HQP)提供支持性的培训环境。该计划将使HQP能够在生物材料、纳米技术、金属结构和病原体检测和检测等多学科领域进行培训，并有机会为先进材料和制造业以及生物技术和医疗保健行业的高需求工作开发可转移的技能。

Background: The integration of nanomaterials has transformed key applications in a multitude of scientific fields, such as energy, environmental technologies, water, therapeutics, and chemical processing. Gold nanoparticles are at the center of many of these applications. Conventionally, the physical properties of gold nanoparticles, such as size and shape, are engineered to alter properties and enhance performance. In the past 5 years, our lab has synthesized star-shaped gold nanoparticles with unique surface properties and showed that understanding how nanoparticle interact with biological membranes can lead to the development of novel sensors.  The designs of materials have been focusing on a single metal element, gold. Recent advances in nanomaterials engineering have led to the synthesis of nanostructures with metallic nanoclusters and showed enormous potential to improve efficiencies in terms of selectivity to target molecules. This proposal aims to discover the interactions between metallic NPs and microbial cells beyond the use of Au structures.  Objectives and Scientific Approaches: The long-term objective of the Discovery Grant is to drive an active research program to accelerate the discovery of design-dependent interactions of metallic NPs with microorganisms. The short-term objectives are 1) to investigate the interactions of alloy NPs with microorganisms and 2) to develop an iterative design of metallic nanoparticles towards biorthogonality. The program will dive into the mechanistic understanding of how to utilize the metallic nanoparticles for the detection of microbial cells, fostering the development of a more versatile platform for pathogen identification, and will, in turn, unlock new directions for the development of more highly resolved nanomaterial-based sensors. Novelty and significance: The work will the first comprehensive investigation of alloy metals to generate a "fingerprint"-like interactions for the sensing of biologicals and structures. The discoveries made from the iterative design can be extended to accelerate the discovery of new materials and pathogen sensors. The use of iterative design approach in the proposed work may establish a paradigm in which the use of progressive design reveals fundamental insight into material properties and guides systems design and engineering across a number of disciplines. This research program will also provide a supportive training environment for highly qualified personnel (HQP) including 2 Ph.D., 2 MASc, and 6 MEng students. The program would enable training of HQP in the multidisciplinary fields of biomaterials, nanotechnology, metallic structures, and pathogen sensing and detection, and have opportunities to develop transferable skills for high demand jobs in the advanced materials and manufacturing industry as well as in the biotechnology and healthcare industry.