Novel strategy for quantitating colloidal nanostructures by phage-display immunoassay

纳米技术的最新进展导致了新技术的发展，这将对生物研究和应用产生重大影响。这包括整合量子点用于研究生物过程，使用金属纳米结构用于癌症治疗，或研究纳米毒性。很明显，纳米技术的发现将产生广泛的应用，Chan实验室是开发生物和生物医学应用纳米技术的领先实验室之一。 Chan实验室在生物纳米技术研究方面有一个完整的计划。然而，该研究领域的主要障碍是无法测量纳米结构（即，在大多数研究中，对不同表面涂层的纳米结构进行定量是极其困难的）。 这就是为什么这一领域的大多数研究都是定性的。如果没有量化的能力，就很难在生物实验中完全表征纳米结构（结果可能被错误地解释）。 为了推进这一领域的研究，我们的目标是开发新的方法来定量生物环境中的胶体纳米结构。我们的目标是结合联合收割机的分子工程方法称为噬菌体筛选，以确定分子，可以识别的纳米结构（基于其涂层化学），并使用这些分子在夹心免疫测定（这是一种常用的分子生物学技术，用于测量生物分子的浓度）。 该项目的成功将消除推进纳米技术研究的一个主要障碍。

Recent advances in nanotechnology have led to he development of new technologies that will signficantly impact biological research and applications. This includes the integration of quantum dots for studying biological processes, use of metal nanostructures for cancer treatment, or the study of nanotoxicity. It is clear that there will be broad applications stemming from nanotechnology discoveries and the Chan lab is one of the leading labs in developing nanotechnology for biological and biomedical applicatons.  The Chan lab has a full program in bionanotechnology research. However, a major barrier to this research field is the inability to measure the nanostructures (i.e., in most research studies, it is extremely difficult to quantitate nanostructures of different surface coatings).  This is the reason that most research in this area are only qualitative. Without the ability to  quatitate, it is difficult to fully characterize the nanostructures (results can be incorrectly interpreted) in biological experiments.   In order to advance this field of research, we aim to develop novel methods to quantitate colloidal nanostructures in biological environments. We aim to combine a molecular engineering approach called phage screening to identify molecules that can recognize the nanostructures (based on their coating chemistry) and to use these molecules in sandwich immunoassays (which is a commonly-used molecular biology technique for measuring biomolecule concentrations).  The success of this project would remove a major barrier for advancing nanotechnology research.