Zeta-potential data reliability of gold nanoparticle biomolecular conjugates and its application in sensitive quantification of surface absorbed protein.

Zeta potentials (ZP) of gold nanoparticle bioconjugates (AuNP-bios) provide important information on surface charge that is critical for many applications including drug delivery, biosensing, and cell imaging. The ZP measurements (ZPMs) are conducted under an alternative electrical field at a high frequency under laser irradiation, which may strongly affect the status of surface coating of AuNP-bios and generate unreliable data. In this study, we systemically evaluated the ZP data reliability (ZPDR) of citrate-, thiolated single stranded DNA-, and protein-coated AuNPs mainly according to the consistence of ZPs in the repeated ZPMs and the changes of the hydrodynamic size before and after the ZPMs. We found that the ZPDR was highly dependent on both buffer conditions and surface modifications. Overall, the higher ionic strength of the buffer and the lower affinity of surface bounders were related with the worse ZPDR. The ZPDR of citrate-coated AuNP was good in water, but bad in 10mM phosphate buffer (PB), showing substantially decrease of the absolute ZP values after each measurement, probably due to the electrical field facilitated adsorption of negatively charged phosphate ions on AuNPs. The significant desorption of DNAs from AuNP was observed in the PB containing medium concentration of NaCl, but not in PB. The excellent ZPDR of bovine serum albumin (BSA)-coated AuNP was observed at high salt concentrations and low surface coverage, enabling ZPM as an ultra-sensitive tool for protein quantification on the surface of AuNPs with a single molecule resolution.