Characterization of the specific interactions between nanoparticles and proteins at residue-resolution by alanine scanning mutagenesis.

The interaction between nanoparticles and proteins is a central problem in the nano-bio fields. However, it is still a great challenge to characterize the specific interaction between nanoparticles and proteins in structural details. Using the Goldbodies, the artificial antibodies created by grafting complementary-determining regions (CDRs) of natural antibodies onto gold nanoparticles, as the models, we manage to identify the key residues of the CDR peptides on gold nanoparticles for the specific interactions by alanine scanning mutagenesis. Each and every residue of the CDR peptides on two Goldbodies (which specifically bind with hen egg white lysozyme and epidermal growth factor receptor, respectively) is mutated to alanine one by one, generating a total of 18 single-mutants of the two Goldbodies. Experimental results reveal that the key residues of the CDR peptides for the specific interactions between the two Goldbodies and the corresponding antigens are exactly the same as that in the natural antibodies, thus prove that the correct conformations of the CDRs of natural antibodies have been successfully reconstructed on AuNPs. This is the first residue-resolution structural illustration for the specific interaction between a designed nanoparticle and a protein.