Templated self-assembly of quantum dots from aqueous solution using protein scaffold

摘要

Short, histidine-containing peptides can be conjugated to lysine-containing protein scaffolds to controllabiy attach quantum dots (QDs) to the scaffold, allowing for generic attachment of quantum dots to any protein without the ire of specially engineered domains. This technique was used to bind quantum dots from aqueous solution to both chicken IgG and cowpea mosaic MILLS (CPMV), a 30 nm viral particle. These quantum dot-protein assemblies nere studied in detail. The IgG-QD complexes were shown to retain binding specificity to their antigen after modification. The CPMV-QD complexes luive a local concentration of quantum dots greater than 3000 nmol ml~(-1), and show a 15 percent increase in fluorescence quantum yield over free quantum dots in solution.