Impact of Protein Corona on Noncovalent Molecule–Gold Nanoparticle-Based Sensing

Gold nanoparticle (AuNP)-based sensors have been extensively applied for sensing or imaging. It is known that a protein shell named protein corona (PC) formed around the nanomaterials could not only block the desired function of nanomaterials but also affect their behavior, which is a hot and important issue needing consideration. Therefore, we hypothesize that the formation of PC around AuNPs could inevitably affect the AuNP-based target assay. In this work, the effects of PC on the detection results in sensors based on AuNPs were studied. Three types of noncovalent molecule–AuNP sensors including AuNP–dichlorofluorescein, AuNP–aptamer, and AuNP–antibody-DNA were constructed, and several typical proteins (bovine serum albumin, fibrinogen, hemoglobin, and β-lactoglobulin), milk, and fetal bovine serum were selected as models for the formation of PCs. This study shows that the PC could cause the loss of detection signals (up to 80%) and result in positive deviation of the measuring value compared with the true value. Moreover, the loss of detection signals could also increase the limits of detection (almost 10 times), decreasing the sensitivity of the three types of sensors, as proposed in this work compared to that without PC. Moreover, the polyethylene glycol backfilling strategy could not resolve the negative effects of PC on noncovalent molecule–AuNP sensors. The impacts of PC on detection results from noncovalent molecule–AuNP sensors would cause misdiagnosis or wasted production, which needs careful reconsideration of the AuNP-based detection in application fields like clinic diagnosis, food safety control, and so forth.