Method of Using Raman Spectroscopy to Understand the Conformation of Fibrous Proteins.

Raman spectroscopy has been widely used in the research of fibrous proteins because of the insensitivity to moisture, less amount of sample, and better signal-to-noise ratio. In recent years, Raman spectroscopy is adopted to investigate the secondary structures of solid or aqueous protein, the conformation transition under different conditions (concentration, temperature, pressure, pH, chemical modification, external force, etc.), the orientation of the molecular chains, and some important chemical bonds.

Secondary Structure Analysis of Single Silk Nanofibril through Infrared Nanospectroscopy.

Infrared nanospectroscopy (NanoIR) is a new experimental technique to research the secondary structure of protein-based nanoarchitectures in recent years. Compared with the conventional IR, NanoIR reveals to be an exquisite, sensitive, and accurate tool to analyze and image the single molecule secondary structure, which can reach up to high spatial resolution (10 nm). Here we present a detailed protocol to introduce how to study single silk nanofibril (SNF) and process the results by this routine.

Dendritic organosilica nanospheres with large mesopores as multi-guests vehicle for photoacoustic/ultrasound imaging-guided photodynamic therapy.

Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is a minimally invasive treatment strategy that uses photosensitizers and light in combination with oxygen to generate cytotoxic singlet oxygen (O) to kill cancer cells by necrosis or apoptosis. However, the treatment effects are still not satisfactory because of the tumor hypoxia and the PDT-induced oxygen consumption. Here, we have successfully synthesized dendritic mesoporous organosilica nanoparticles (MONs) with large center-radial pore structure that can be used to simultaneously encapsulate indocyanine green (ICG, <1 nm) and macromolecule catalase (CAT, 2.

Full-color tunable photoluminescent carbon dots based on oil/water interfacial synthesis and their applications.

Herein, we developed a facile method to produce high yield, full-color tunable photoluminescent (PL) carbon dots (CDs) at the oil/water interface. This unique synthesis method for CDs involved the use of the oil-soluble small molecule styrene as both the reactant and oil phase medium at low temperature (60 °C) through a catalytic-oxidation reaction in an aqueous system, which resulted in a high product yield (about 50 wt%). Interestingly, the hydroxy-rich CDs at the oil/water interface self-assembled into nanospheres (N-CDs) spontaneously hydrogen-bond interactions in the presence of styrene droplets.

Protein-Induced Synthesis of Chiral Conducting Polyaniline Nanospheres.

A green and novel method for the synthesis of chiral conducting polyaniline was developed. Chiral polyaniline induced by protein was obtained by using the template-assisted polymerization route. The experimental results demonstrated that proteins such as bovine hemoglobin and bovine serum albumin had the capacity to direct enantio specificity of PANI which may be ascribed to the α-helix structure within the proteins.