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Membrane-protein binding measured with solution-phase plasmonic nanocube sensors

Nature Methods volume 9, pages 1189–1191 (2012)Cite this article

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Abstract

We describe a solution-phase sensor of lipid-protein binding based on localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) of silver nanocubes. When silica-coated nanocubes are mixed in a suspension of lipid vesicles, supported membranes spontaneously assemble on their surfaces. Using a standard laboratory spectrophotometer, we calibrated the LSPR peak shift due to protein binding to the membrane surface and then characterized the lipid-binding specificity of a pleckstrin homology domain protein.

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Figure 1: Physical properties of Ag@SiO2 core-shell nanocubes.
Figure 2: Calibration of the nanocube assay.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Director, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, of the US Department of Energy under contract no. DE-AC02-05CH11231 (to J.T.G.) and by US National Institutes of Health Research Grant GM21841 (to J.T.). P.Y. would like to acknowledge the support from King Abdulaziz University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA

    Hung-Jen Wu, Wan-Chen Lin, Christopher Rhodes & Jay T Groves

  2. Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA

    Hung-Jen Wu, Joel Henzie, Wan-Chen Lin, Christopher Rhodes, Peidong Yang & Jay T Groves

  3. Physical Biosciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, USA

    Hung-Jen Wu & Jay T Groves

  4. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA

    Christopher Rhodes

  5. Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, Division of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Molecular Biology, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA

    Zhu Li, Elodie Sartorel & Jeremy Thorner

  6. Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, USA

    Jay T Groves

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  1. Hung-Jen Wu
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Contributions

H.-J.W. and J.T.G. conceived the solution-phase nanocube sensor strategy. H.-J.W. implemented the experiments, J.H. synthesized nanocubes and performed TEM, W.-C.L. performed FCS measurements, C.R. performed LSPR simulations and Z.L. and E.S. prepared Ste5 proteins. H.-J.W., C.R. and J.T.G. wrote the manuscript. J.T.G., J.T. and P.Y. supervised the project. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript at all stages.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jay T Groves.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Supplementary Figures 1–8, Supplementary Table 1 and Supplementary Discussion (PDF 1434 kb)

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Wu, HJ., Henzie, J., Lin, WC. et al. Membrane-protein binding measured with solution-phase plasmonic nanocube sensors. Nat Methods 9, 1189–1191 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.2211

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