Dual Mode Fluorophore-Doped Nickel Nitrilotriacetic Acid-Modified Silica Nanoparticles Combine Histidine-Tagged Protein Purification with Site-Specific Fluorophore Labeling

摘要

We present the first example of a fluorophore-doped nickel chelate surface- modified silica nanoparticle that functions in a dual mode, combining histidine-tagged protein purification with site-specific fluorophore labeling. Tetramethylrhodamine (TMR)-doped silica nanoparticles, estimated to contain 700–900 TMRs per ca. 23-nm particle, were surface modified with nitrilotriacetic acid (NTA), producing TMR-SiO2-NTA-Ni⁺². Silica-embedded TMR retains very high quantum yield, is resistant to quenching by buffer components and is modestly quenched and only to a certain depth (ca. 2 nm) by surface-attached Ni⁺². When exposed to a bacterial lysate containing estrogen receptor α ligand binding domain (ERα) as a minor component, these beads showed very high specificity binding, enabling protein purification in one step. The capacity and specificity of these beads for binding a his-tagged protein were characterized by electrophoresis, radiometric counting, and MALDI-TOF MS. ERα, bound to TMR-SiO2-NTA-Ni⁺⁺ beads in a site-specific manner, exhibited good activity for ligand binding and for ligand-induced binding to coactivators in solution FRET experiments and protein microarray fluorometric and FRET assays. This dual-mode type TMR-SiO2-NTA-Ni⁺⁺ system represents a powerful combination of one-step histidine-tagged protein purification and site-specific labeling with multiple fluorophore species.BRIEFSTetramethylrhodamine-doped silica nanoparticles surface modified with nitrilotriacetic acid are dual-mode agents that can be used to purify and site-specifically fluorophore label his-tagged proteins in one step for fluorometric and FRET experiments.