1 research outputs found
Analysis of Carbohydrate–Carbohydrate Interactions Using Sugar-Functionalized Silicon Nanoparticles for Cell Imaging
Protein-carbohydrate binding depends
on multivalent ligand display that is even more important for low
affinity carbohydrate–carbohydrate interactions. Detection
and analysis of these low affinity multivalent binding events are
technically challenging. We describe the synthesis of dual-fluorescent
sugar-capped silicon nanoparticles that proved to be an attractive
tool for the analysis of low affinity interactions. These ultrasmall
NPs with sizes of around 4 nm can be used for NMR quantification of
coupled sugars. The silicon nanoparticles are employed to measure
the interaction between the cancer-associated glycosphingolipids GM3
and Gg3 and the associated <i>k</i><sub>D</sub> value by
surface plasmon resonance experiments. Cell binding studies, to investigate
the biological relevance of these carbohydrate–carbohydrate
interactions, also benefit from these fluorescent sugar-capped nanoparticles