Local Surface Electric Field’s Effect on Adsorbed Proteins’ Orientation

Abstract

Hydrogenated nanocrystalline silicon, while being non-charged and non-polar, could be an ideal candidate for the non-covalent and orientation-controlled immobilization of biomolecules thanks to local electric fields around nanocrystals. To that effect, the adsorption of bovine serum albumin on substrates with different densities of nanocrystals, revealed by Raman spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction, was studied using infrared spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy. It was found that the protein–surface interactions followed different mechanisms depending on the nanostructure at the surface: hydrophobic on the non-crystalline part of the surface and electrostatic around the crystalline part. These electrostatic interactions were driven by the electric fields that arose at the junction between crystalline and amorphous structures. These electric fields were found to be strong enough to interact with the amide dipoles, thereby reorienting the adsorbed protein molecules on this part of the surface. Nevertheless, the adsorbed proteins were found to be denatured, which was due to the surface chemistry, and not affected by the nanostructure.

Interaction of enzymes with lignocellulosic materials: causes, mechanism and influencing factors

“…(Hanefeld et al 2009;Reis et al 2018), and gravitational forces (Arca-Ramos et al 2018). In addition to these, the effect of surface electrostatic charge (Feller et al 2010;Filali et al 2019) and hydrophobic interactions (Faccio 2018) is also present. Movement of enzymes is also controlled by concentration, diffusible or surface-bound chemical factors such as amino acids, sugars, and oligopeptides.…”

Strong Mesoscopic Prismatic Face Growth Suppression in High-Speed Unidirectional Growth of KDP Single Crystals

“…In reality, molecules, ions, unit cells, and even clusters all contribute to the growth of the crystal surface (see discussion below on density functional calculations) assuming that solute molecules have two orientations, and we label their concentrations as C ↑ and C ↓ , respectively. The growth of crystal surface requires that molecules near the liquid-crystal boundary have a preferred orientation in order to achieve effective chemical binding, − and we denote this component of solute as C ↓ .…”

A Bioinspired Coating for Stabilizing Li Metal Batteries

“…Natural proteins are composed of numerous combinations of amino acids and perform various functions in animal bodies. − In particular, bovine serum albumin (BSA), a typical animal protein in the blood vessels, is an essential protein acting as a transporter or carrier for exogenous or endogenous molecules such as metal ions, enzymes, other proteins, fatty acids, and pharmaceuticals. These ion transport, molecular carrier and binding functions are due to the abundant polar residues (83 positively charged and 98 negatively charged in 583 residues) of BSA. , As a result, BSA has been effectively used as the blocker in immunohistochemistry for its nonspecific binding sites to antibodies. − The polar residues provide strong interactions with Li metal, and the charged residues generate a much stronger local electric field compared with the electric field between electrodes in LMBs, that prevails at the interface of protein/body fluid. − Therefore, BSA has a great potential to be used as a coating material on Li anode for regulating the transport of Li ions in electrolytes and resolve the Li dendrite growth.…”