Colorimetric and Label-Free Optical Detection of Pb Ions via Colloidal Gold Nanoparticles.

The detection of the lead heavy metal (Pb) in water is crucial in many chemical processes, as it is associated with serious health hazards. Here, we report the selective and precise colorimetric detection of Pb ions in water, exploiting the aggregation and self-assembly mechanisms of glutathione (GSH)-functionalized gold nanoparticles (GNPs). The carboxyl functional groups are able to create coordination complexes with Pb, inducing aggregation amongst the GSH-GNPs in the presence of Pb due to the chelation of the GSH ligands.

Optical Detection of Denatured Ferritin Protein via Plasmonic Gold Nanoparticles Exposure through Aminosilane Solution.

The presence of denatured proteins within a therapeutic drug product can create a series of serious adverse effects, such as mild irritation, immunogenicity, anaphylaxis, or instant death to a patient. The detection of protein degradation is complicated and expensive due to current methods associated with expensive instrumentation, reagents, and processing time. We have demonstrated here a platform for visual biosensing of denatured proteins that is fast, low cost, sensitive, and user friendly by exploiting the plasmonic properties of noble metal nanoparticles.

Visual Detection of Denatured Glutathione Peptides: A Facile Method to Visibly Detect Heat Stressed Biomolecules.

Every year pharmaceutical companies use significant resources to mitigate aggregation of pharmaceutical drug products. Specifically, peptides and proteins that have been denatured or degraded can lead to adverse patient reactions such as undesired immune responses. Current methods to detect aggregation of biological molecules are limited to costly and time consuming processes such as high pressure liquid chromatography, ultrahigh pressure liquid chromatography and SDS-PAGE gels.