Modular Nanoparticle Platform for Solution-Phase Optical Sensing of Protein-Protein Interactions

Protein-protein interactions regulate essentially all cellular processes. Understanding these interactions, including the quantification of binding parameters, is crucial for unraveling the molecular mechanisms underlying cellular pathways and, ultimately, their roles in cellular physiology and pathology. Current methods for measuring protein-protein interactions in vitro generally require amino acid conjugation of fluorescent tags, complex instrumentation, large amounts of purified protein, or measurement at extended surfaces. Here, we present an elegant nanoparticle-based platform for the optical detection of protein-protein interactions in the solution phase. We synthesized gold-coated silver decahedral nanoparticles possessing high chemical stability and exceptional optical sensing properties. The nanoparticle surface is then tailored for specific binding to commonly used polyhistidine tags of recombinant proteins. Sequential addition of proteins to the nanoparticle suspension results in spectral shifts of the localized surface plasmon resonance that can be monitored by conventional UV-vis spectrophotometry. With this approach, we demonstrate both the qualitative detection of specific protein-protein interactions and the quantification of equilibrium and kinetic binding parameters between small globular proteins. Requiring minimal protein quantities and basic laboratory equipment, this technique offers a simple, economical, and modular approach to characterizing protein-protein interactions, holds promise for broad use in future studies, and may serve as a template for future biosensing technologies.