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Updated: Apr 8, 2026

Monitoring Conformational Dynamics of Single Unmodified Proteins using Plasmonic Nanotweezers
Published on: March 21, 2025
"Superchiral" Spectroscopy: Detection of Protein Higher Order Hierarchical Structure with Chiral Plasmonic
Ryan Tullius, Affar S Karimullah, Marion Rodier
1§Department of Chemistry, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Massachusetts 01003, United States.
Abstract:
Optical spectroscopic methods do not routinely provide information on higher order hierarchical structure (tertiary/quaternary) of biological macromolecules and assemblies. This necessitates the use of time-consuming and material intensive techniques, such as protein crystallography, NMR, and electron microscopy. Here we demonstrate a spectroscopic phenomenon, superchiral polarimetry, which can rapidly characterize ligand-induced changes in protein higher order (tertiary/quaternary) structure at the picogram level, which is undetectable using conventional CD spectroscopy. This is achieved by utilizing the enhanced sensitivity of superchiral evanescent fields to mesoscale chiral structure.
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