Fluorescence plate reader for quantum dot-protein bioconjugation analysis.

We present here a new and alternative method that uses a Fluorescence Plate Reader in a different approach, not to study protein-protein interactions, but to evaluate the efficiency of the protein bioconjugation to quantum dots (QDs). The method is based on the QDs' native fluorescence and was successfully tested by employing two different QDs-proteins conjugation methodologies, one by promoting covalent binding and other by inducing adsorption processes. For testing, we used bioconjugates between carboxyl coated CdTe QDs and bovine serum albumin, concanavalin A lectin and anti-A antibody.