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The usefulness of the hybrid materials of nanoparticles and biological molecules in many occasions depends on how well one can achieve a rational design based on specific binding and programmable assembly. Nonspecific binding between nanoparticles and biomolecules is one of the major barriers for achieving its utilities in a biological system. In this paper, we demonstrate a new approach to eliminate nonspecific interactions between nanoparticles and proteins by synthesizing ethylene glycol protected gold nanoparticles. We discovered that with the water content optimized in the range of 9-18% in the reaction mixture, di-, tri-, and tetra(ethylene glycol) protected gold nanoparticles Au-S-EGn (n = 2, 3, and 4) could be directly synthesized. These gold nanoparticles that are bonded with a uniform monolayer with defined length varying from 0.8 to 1.6 nm (from molecular modeling) have great stability in aqueous solutions with a high concentration of electrolyte and organic solutions. Using ion-exchange chromatography and gel electrophoresis, we demonstrated that these Au-S-EGn (n = 2, 3, or 4) nanoparticles have complete resistance to protein nonspecific interactions. These types of nanoparticles provide a fundamental starting material for designing hybrid materials composed of metallic nanoparticles and biomolecules.
Zheng et al. (Wed,) studied this question.