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Minerva was originally founded to research and design next generation biochips based on gold nanoparticle technology. Designing a "chip in solution" opens the door to a wealth of new possibilities in biosensing, diagnostics, and drug discovery that is infeasible on a 2-D surface. Gold nanoparticles, due to their optical properties and affinity for the thiol moiety, presented themselves as the ideal platform to build these next generation chips.
Using customed synthesized components, Minerva has optimized the construction of poly-functional gold nanoparticles that present highly tailored surface chemistries. These molecules that form the self-assembled monolayer (SAM) coating the surface of each nanoparticle have been optimized to impart stability to a wide range of biological stressors including salt, pH, and temperature. Resistance to non-specific binding has been incorporated into the molecular design of these SAM components, providing a unique combination of specificity and stability across a wide range of uses.
Incorporation of the nitrilotriacetic acid moiety allows these nanoparticles to stably bind His-tagged peptide and proteins. This can be utilized to test protein binding pairs quickly and efficiently in a simple colorimetric fashion. Please see the animated video below for a model demonstration of this system's ability to identify the correct binding partner of the well known SNAP25/Syntaxin1a heterodimer.
In the video, we begin with the focus on a single nanoparticle loaded with SNAP25. The binding of the thiol to the gold nanoparticle is evident, as well as the metal complex formed between the NTA residue, the Ni2+ ion, and the histidine residues of the His-tag. This complex is what anchors the proteins to the surface of the SAM and provides consistent orientation of the proteins into solution. The background is red, representing the vivid red color of unaggregated nanoparticles in solution. As the video progresses, you will see nanoparticles loaded with Syntaxin1 begin to interact with the SNAP25 on the original nanoparticles. As the proteins bind to each other, the nanoparticles are drawn into closer proximity inside this growing aggregate. This causes the solution to turn blue. The system is a simple, yet powerful, colorimetric design that allows easy detection of protein binding pairs as well as agents that inhibit them. Had an inhibitor been introduced in the example video above, it would have prevented the binding between nanoparticles and the solution would have stayed red.
