Bovine serum albumin (BSA) protected nanoclusters (Au and Ag) represent a group of nanomaterials that holds great promise in biophysical applications due to their unique fluorescence properties and lack of toxicity. While, these metal nanoclusters have -utility in a variety of disciplines including catalysis, biosensing, photonics, imaging and molecular electronics. However, they suffer from several certain disadvantages such as low fluorescence quantum efficiency (typically near 6%) and broad emission spectrum (540nm to 800nm). We describe an approach to enhance the apparent brightness of BSA Au clusters by linking it with high extinction donor organic dye pacific blue (PB). In this conjugate PB acts as a donor to BSA Au clusters and enhances its brightness by resonance energy transfer (RET). We found that the emission of BSA Au clusters can be enhanced by a magnitude of two-folds by resonance energy transfer (RET) from the high extinction donor PB, and BSA Au clusters can act as an acceptor to nanosecond lifetime organic dyes. By pumping the BSA Au clusters using a high extinction donor, one can increase the effective brightness of less bright fluorophores like BSA Au clusters. Moreover, we prepared another conjugate of BSA Au clusters with the near infra-red (NIR) dye Dylight 750 (Dy750), where BSA Au cluster act as a donor to Dy750. We observed that BSA Au clusters can function as a donor, showing 46% transfer efficiency to the NIR dye Dy750 with long lifetime component in acceptor decay through RET. Such RET-based probes can be used to prevent the problems of broad emission spectrum associated with the BSA Au clusters. Moreover, transferring energy from BSA Au cluster to Dy750 will result in a RET probe with narrow emission spectrum and long lifetime component which can be utilized in imaging applications.

This work reports on the chromophores interactions within protein-protected gold nanoclusters. We conducted spectroscopic studies of fluorescence emissions originated from gold nanoclusters and intrinsic tryptophan (Trp) in BSA or HSA proteins. Both, steady state fluorescence and lifetime measurements show a significant Forster resonance energy transfer (FRET) from Trp to the gold nanocluster. Tryptophan lifetimes in the case of protein-protected gold nanoclusters are 2.6ns and 2.3ns for BSA and HSA Au clusters while 5.8ns for native BSA and 5.6 for native HSA. The apparent distances from Trp to gold nanocluster emission center, we estimated as 24.75A0 for BSA and 23.80A0 for HSA. We also studied a potassium iodide (KI) quenching of protein-protected gold nanoclusters and compared with the quenching of BSA and HAS alone. The rates of Trp quenching were smaller in BSA-Au and HSA-Au nanoclusters than in the case of free proteins, which is consistent with shorter lifetime of quenched Trp(s) and lower accessibility for KI. While Trp residues were quenched by KI, the emissions originated from nanoclusters were practically unquenched. In summary, for BSA and HSA Au clusters, we found 55% and 59% energy transfer efficiency respectively from tryoptophan to gold clusters. We believe this interaction can be used to our advantage in terms of developing resonance energy transfer based sensing applications.

In this paper, we have synthesized BSA protected gold nanoclusters (BSA Au nanocluster) and studied the effect of quencher, protein denaturant, pH and temperature on the fluorescence properties of the tryptophan molecule of the BSA Au nanocluster and native BSA. We have also studied their effect on the peak emission of BSA Au nanoclusters (650 nm). The phtophysical characterization of a newly developed fluorophore in different environments is absolutely necessary to futher develop their biomedical and analytical applications. It was observed from our experiments that the tryptophan in BSA Au nanoclusters is better shielded from the polar environment. Tryptophan in native BSA showed a red shift in its peak emission wavelength position. Tryptophan is a highly polarity sensitive dye and a minimal change in its microenvironment can be easily observed in its photophysical properties.

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