Stable Formation of Gold Nanoparticles onto Redox-Active Solid Biosubstrates Made of Squid Suckerin Proteins

Bram Cantaert; Dawei Ding; Clément Rieu; Luigi Petrone; Shawn Hoon; Kian Hong Kock; Ali Miserez

doi:10.1002/marc.201500218

Stable Formation of Gold Nanoparticles onto Redox-Active Solid Biosubstrates Made of Squid Suckerin Proteins

Macromol Rapid Commun. 2015 Nov;36(21):1877-1883. doi: 10.1002/marc.201500218. Epub 2015 Jul 14.

Authors

Bram Cantaert¹, Dawei Ding¹, Clément Rieu¹, Luigi Petrone¹, Shawn Hoon², Kian Hong Kock², Ali Miserez^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ Biological and Biomimetic Materials Laboratory, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 637553, Singapore.
² Molecular Engineering Laboratory, Biomedical Sciences Institutes, Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star), Proteos, 138673, Singapore.
³ School of Biological Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 637551, Singapore.

PMID: 26174859
DOI: 10.1002/marc.201500218

Abstract

The use of biomolecules to synthesize inorganic nanomaterials, including metallic nanoparticles, offers the ability to induce controlled growth under mild environmental conditions. Here, recently discovered silk-like "suckerin" proteins are used to induce the formation of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs). Advantage is taken of the distinctive biological and physico-chemical characteristics of suckerins, namely their facile recombinant expression, their solubility in aqueous solutions, and their modular primary structure with high molar content of redox-active tyrosine (Tyr) residues to induce the formation of AuNPs not only in solution, but also from nanostructured solid substrates fabricated from suckerins.

Keywords: biomaterials; coatings; nanoparticles; proteins; suckerin.