Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Surface engineering of nanoparticles has recently emerged as a promising technique for synthetic molecular recognition of biological analytes. In particular, the use of synthetic heteropolymers adsorbed onto the surface of a nanoparticle can yield selective detection of a molecular target. Synthetic molecular recognition has unique advantages in leveraging the photostability, versatility, and exceptional chemical stability of nanomaterials. In particular, single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNT) exhibit a large Stokes shift and near infrared emission for maximum biological sample transparency. Optical biosensors with high signal transduction and molecular specificity can be synthesized with amphiphilic heteropolymers grafted to SWNT, and discovered by high-throughput screening. Herein, we describe the development and the characterization of surface-engineered nanoparticles, or synthetic antibodies, for protein detection.