Insights into the interaction of human serum albumin and carbon dots: Hydrothermal synthesis and biophysical study
Graphical abstract
Introduction
Among carbon-base nanomaterials carbon dots (CDs) have attracted considerable attention. Compared with polymers, conventional organic dyes, metal nanoparticles and semiconductor quantum dots, CDs possess numerous superior property such as low toxicity, good biocompatibility, environment-friendly, ease of functionalization, highly water-dispersible, easy preparation as well as photostability [[1], [2], [3], [4]]. Thus, CDs have presented great potential in various applications, including biomedicine, bioimaging, biosensing, optoelectronic devices, fluorescent probes, et al. [2,[5], [6], [7], [8]]. However, there are some urgent questions to solve. For instance, most of CDs have a relatively low quantum yield, a short-wavelength blue-green region of CDs distinctly confine CDs application in biologically-relevant fields. Different method including heteroatom doping, surface functional and surface passivation were used to improve the property of CDs. Heteroatom doping include nitrogen, sulfur, fluorine, phosphorus and boron, etc. It through improving optical and electronic properties, improving affinity and increasing the quantum yield of CDs. Nitrogen (N) atom can combine strongly with the C atom due to the size of it being similar to C; S doping can tune the maximum fluorescence emission of CDs to a longer wavelength, and improve the fluorescence intensity of CDs. So, nitrogen and sulfur heteroatom doping are used to prepare CDs in this study [[9], [10], [11], [12], [13]].
Serum albumins are the most plentiful protein of blood plasma, that consists of three homologous domains, each domain is divided into two subdomains. Human serum albumins (HSA) are used widely as a biological model to study the molecular interaction with nanoparticle, which can carriage, allocation, and pass on many endogenous and exogenous substances [[14], [15], [16]]. To date, CDs is appeal to tremendous biomedical applications, an increasing number of researchers to probe the molecular interaction in between biomacromolecule and CDs [7,15]. Drug interaction with proteins can be modulated the bioavailability of drug, variation of binding constants of three drugs with HSA and γ-globulins with different concentration of CDs were discussed [17]. The quenching constants, thermodynamic parameters, binding location and conformation changes between CDs with different serum albumins were explored [18,19]. CDs as a fluorescent probe to selective bovine serum albumin and DNA were investigated [20,21]. Not only different optical properties, discrepancy particle sizes but also surface chemical properties of obtained CDs by discrepancy synthetic methods and raw materials, thus, there are different effect on protein structure and function via interaction with each kind of CDs [22].
In this research, three different N,S-CDs were produced via vary carbon source, interaction with human serum albumin have been discussed. To our knowledge, system compare the influence of different carbon source to synthesis N,S-CDs and compare different N,S-CDs interaction with human serum albumin is rarely to report. The molecular docking had successful applied to study the N,S-CDs interaction with HSA. Discrepancy quantum yield and property of N,S-CDs were produced. Different N,S-CDs possessed various characteristic that will have different quenching mechanism when they interaction with human serum albumin, study the mechanism of action at molecular level will help people to choose suitable CDs to apply in nanomedical.
Section snippets
Materials
Ascorbic acid (AA) and N-Acetyl-L-cysteine (NAC) were purchase from Sinopharm Chemical Reagent. HSA and hydroxymethyl aminomethanne (Tris) were purchase from Sigma-Aldrich (St. Louis, MO, USA); ibuprofen and warfarin were purchase from Hubei Biocause Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (Hubei, China; the purity no less than 99.7%) and Trust Chemical Industry Co., Ltd. (Nanjing, China; the purity no less than 99.5%), respectively; Every other reagents used everywhere this research were analytical purity.
Characterization of CDs
The different reaction times and the various doping agents can affect the QY of N,S-CDs. The QY of CDs (CA) reaction time for 1 h, 1.5 h, 2 h, 2.5 h and 3 h was had be discussed. As illustrated in Fig. 2S(A), the QY were 38.70%, 68.50%, 51.70%, 37.20% and 35.90% for the reaction time 1 h, 1.5 h, 2 h, 2.5 h and 3 h of CDs (CA), respectively. As shown in Fig. 2S(B), the QY of CA add with urea or CA add with NAC are 17.00% and 43.30%, respectively. The experimental conditions were optimized as
Conclusions
In this study, high QY of N,S-CDs was prepared via using citric acid as carbon source, and other two different N,S-CDs were produced via vary carbon source. The discrepancy between three different N,S-CDs were discussed, for example, particle diameters, lattice parameters, distinction emission wavelength, et al. When three different N,S-CDs interaction with HSA respectively shown different quenching mechanism, the quenching mechanism between CDs (AA) with HSA is static quenching, the quenching
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Chun-Yan Liang: Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Software, Validation, Visualization, Writing-original draft. Juan Pan: Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Software, Validation. Ai-Min Bai: Resources, Supervision. Yan-Jun Hu: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Project administration, Resources, Supervision, Writing-review & editing.
Declaration of competing interest
There are no conflicts to declare.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21273065), and the Science and Technology Foundation for Excellent Creative Research Group of Hubei Provincial Department of Education (T201810).
References (44)
- et al.
One pot solid-state synthesis of highly fluorescent N and S co-doped carbon dots and its use as fluorescent probe for Ag+ detection in aqueous solution
Sens. Actuators B: Chem.
(2018) - et al.
Ratiometric and selective fluorescent sensor for Fe(III) and bovine serum albumin based on energy transfer
Sens. Actuators B: Chem.
(2018) - et al.
Carbon dots with red-shifted photoluminescence by fluorine doping for optical bio-imaging
Carbon
(2018) - et al.
Carbon dots: biomacromolecule interaction, bioimaging and nanomedicine
Coordin. Chem. Rev.
(2017) - et al.
Human fingernails as an intriguing precursor for the synthesis of nitrogen and sulfur-doped carbon dots with strong fluorescent properties: analytical and bioimaging applications
Sensor. Actuat. B-Chem.
(2018) - et al.
Structure, enzymatic activities, glycation and therapeutic potential of human serum albumin: a natural cargo
Int. J. Biol. Macromol.
(2019) - et al.
Interactions between carbon nanodots with human serum albumin and γ-globulins: the effects on the transportation function
J. Hazard. Mater.
(2016) - et al.
Preparation of carbon quantum dots with a high quantum yield and the application in labeling bovine serum albumin
Appl. Surf. Sci.
(2016) - et al.
Exploring the binding of carbon dots to calf thymus DNA: from green synthesis to fluorescent molecular probe
Carbon
(2018) - et al.
One-pot solid phase pyrolysis synthesis of highly fluorescent nitrogen-doped carbon dots and the interaction with human serum albumin
J. Lumin.
(2018)
Nitrogen and sulfur co-doped carbon dots for highly selective and sensitive detection of Hg (II) ions
Biosens. Bioelectron.
A hydrothermal route to water-stable luminescent carbon dots as nanosensors for pH and temperature
Carbon
Rational design of high quality citric acid-derived carbon dots by selecting efficient chemical structure motifs
Carbon
Human fingernails as an intriguing precursor for the synthesis of nitrogen and sulfur-doped carbon dots with strong fluorescent properties: analytical and bioimaging application
Sens. Actuators B: Chem.
One-step synthesis of self-doped carbon dots with highly photoluminescence as multifunctional biosensors for detection of iron ions and pH
Sens. Actuators B: Chem.
A rapid microwave synthesis of nitrogen–sulfur co-doped carbon nanodots a shighly sensitive and selective fluorescence probes for ascorbic acid
Talanta
One-pot synthesis of nitrogen and sulfur co-doped carbon dots and its application for sensor and multicolor cellular imaging
J. Colloid Interf. Sci.
Facile synthesis of nitrogen and sulfur co-doped carbon dots and application for Fe(III) ions detection and cell imaging
Sens. Actuators B: Chem.
Fluorometric investigation of the interaction of bovine serum albumin with surfactants and 6-mercaptopurine
J. Photochem. Photobiol. B-Biol.
Interaction of 5-fluoro-5′-deoxyuridine with human serum albumin under physiological and non-physiological condition: a biophysical investigation
Colloids and Surface B
Binding of erucic acid with human serum albumin using a spectroscopic and molecular docking study
Int. J. Biol. Macromol.
Binding of the endocrine disruptors 4-tert-octylphenol and 4-nonylphenol to human serum albumin
J. Hazard. Mater.
Cited by (16)
Revealing the effects of ligands of silver nanoclusters on the interactions between them and ctDNA: Abstraction to visualization
2023, International Journal of Biological MacromoleculesInvestigation on conformational variation and fibrillation of human serum albumin affected by molybdenum disulfide quantum dots
2021, International Journal of Biological MacromoleculesCitation Excerpt :Liu's group revealed the effect of CdTe QDs on the conformation and the esterase activity of HSA [16]. Many scientific researchers used various analytical methods and technologies to deeply study the binding mechanisms of iron oxide nanoparticles [17] and carbon dots [18] with HSA. All these results indicated that nanoparticles can combine with HSA and further cause the changes in the conformation of HSA, finally causing irreversible influences on the biological functions of HSA.
Are carbon dots effective for ion sensing and antiviral applications? A state-of-the-art description from synthesis methods to cost evaluation
2021, Journal of Materials Research and Technology