IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcom/v12y2021i1d10.1038_s41467-021-21543-3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Optical tweezers-controlled hotspot for sensitive and reproducible surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy characterization of native protein structures

Author

Listed:
  • Xin Dai

    (The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
    Laboratory for Synthetic Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Health@InnoHK, Hong Kong Science Park)

  • Wenhao Fu

    (The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)

  • Huanyu Chi

    (The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)

  • Vince St. Dollente Mesias

    (The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)

  • Hongni Zhu

    (The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)

  • Cheuk Wai Leung

    (The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)

  • Wei Liu

    (The University of Hong Kong)

  • Jinqing Huang

    (The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)

Abstract

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) has emerged as a powerful tool to detect biomolecules in aqueous environments. However, it is challenging to identify protein structures at low concentrations, especially for the proteins existing in an equilibrium mixture of various conformations. Here, we develop an in situ optical tweezers-coupled Raman spectroscopy to visualize and control the hotspot between two Ag nanoparticle-coated silica beads, generating tunable and reproducible SERS enhancements with single-molecule level sensitivity. This dynamic SERS detection window is placed in a microfluidic flow chamber to detect the passing-by proteins, which precisely characterizes the structures of three globular proteins without perturbation to their native states. Moreover, it directly identifies the structural features of the transient species of alpha-synuclein among its predominant monomers at physiological concentration of 1 μM by reducing the ensemble averaging. Hence, this SERS platform holds the promise to resolve the structural details of dynamic, heterogeneous, and complex biological systems.

Suggested Citation

  • Xin Dai & Wenhao Fu & Huanyu Chi & Vince St. Dollente Mesias & Hongni Zhu & Cheuk Wai Leung & Wei Liu & Jinqing Huang, 2021. "Optical tweezers-controlled hotspot for sensitive and reproducible surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy characterization of native protein structures," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 12(1), pages 1-9, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:12:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-021-21543-3
    DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-21543-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21543-3
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41467-021-21543-3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wenhao Fu & Huanyu Chi & Xin Dai & Hongni Zhu & Vince St. Dollente Mesias & Wei Liu & Jinqing Huang, 2023. "Efficient optical plasmonic tweezer-controlled single-molecule SERS characterization of pH-dependent amylin species in aqueous milieus," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-13, December.
    2. Manjia Li & Byung Min Park & Xin Dai & Yingjie Xu & Jinqing Huang & Fei Sun, 2022. "Controlling synthetic membraneless organelles by a red-light-dependent singlet oxygen-generating protein," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-13, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:12:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-021-21543-3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.