Amino acids-conjugated gold, silver and their alloy nanoparticles: Role of surface chemistry and metal composition on peroxidase like activity

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New strategies to fabricate nanomaterials of desired physicochemical properties open up new avenues to use nanomaterials for diverse biological applications. In this context, we demonstrate a green and single step synthesis method to obtain monometallic gold and silver, and bimetallic gold-silver alloy nanoparticles with precise composition and surface functionality control by employing L-tryptophan and L-tyrosine amino acids as reducing and stabilizing agent. The presence of amino acid shell on the surface of metal nanoparticles is observed to provide biological identity to these inorganic nanoparticles, which allows these nanoparticles’ surface to behave like natural enzymes. To validate our hypothesis, we carried out in-vitro studies of these nanomaterials to investigate their peroxidase like behaviour and it was revealed that these amino acids conjugated nanoparticles had dose, temperature, composition, and surface functionality-depended peroxidase like activity. This study opens up new prospects toward careful design of amino acid-functionalized nanomaterials, which has significant potential to be used as new class materials for a range of biological applications.

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Journal: TechConnect Briefs
Volume: 2, Nanotechnology 2014: MEMS, Fluidics, Bio Systems, Medical, Computational & Photonics
Published: June 15, 2014
Pages: 275 - 278
Industry sectors: Advanced Materials & Manufacturing | Medical & Biotech
Topic: Biomaterials
ISBN: 978-1-4822-5827-1