Site-selective protein labeling with ultra-small gold nanoparticle using bio-orthogonal chemistry

Abstract

Depending on sizes, shapes and the kinds of surface stabilizing ligand, gold nanoparticles shows various physical and chemical properties. Especially, it’s call as ‘ultra-small nanoparticle’ if the diameter of the nanoparticle is less than 3 nm and the physical-, chemical properties of ultra-small nanoparticle is obviously different from that of larger size nanoparticles. The attractive properties (small size, high stability, chemoselectivity and ease of detection under transmission electron microscopy) suggest that usage of ultra-small gold nanoparticle in area of cryo-electron microscopy such as single-particle analysis for biomolecule structure determination and cell tomography is highly feasible. In this thesis, the repeatable synthetic method of ultra-small gold nanoparticle was screened and established. Also, for the usage of the nanoparticle in analysis of biomaterials (proteins or cells) using cryo-electrom microscopy, bio-orthogonal formation of covalent conjugation between ultra-small gold nanoparticle and protein which site-specifically non-canonical amino acid incorporated was studied.