Département de chimie moléculaire

Biol. sensing is explored through novel stable colloidal dispersions of pyrrole-benzophenone and pyrrole copolymd. silica (PPy-SiO2-PPyBPh) nanocomposites, which allow covalent linking of biol. mols. through light mediation. The mechanism of nanocomposite attachment to a model protein is studied by gold labeled cholera toxin B (CTB) to enhance the contrast in electron microscopy imaging. The biol. test itself is carried out without gold labeling, i.e., using CTB only. The protein is shown to be covalently bound through the benzophenone groups. When the reactive PPy-SiO2-PPyBPh-CTB nanocomposite is exposed to specific recognition anti-CTB Igs, a qual. visual agglutination assay occurs spontaneously, producing as a pos. test, PPy-SiO2-PPyBPh-CTB-anti-CTB, in less than 1 h, while the control soln. of the PPy-SiO2-PPyBPh-CTB alone remained well-dispersed during the same period. These dispersions were characterized by cryogenic transmission microscopy (cryo-TEM), SEM, FTIR and XPS. [on SciFinder(R)]