Department of Pharmaceutical Analysis, China Pharmaceutical University, 24 Tongjiaxiang, Nanjing 210009, China.
Department of Chemistry, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 710 N. Pleasant St., Amherst, MA 01003, USA.
Analyst. 2020 Apr 14;145(8):3049-3055. doi: 10.1039/d0an00226g.
Surface modification of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) has significant and complicated effects on their interactions with cell membranes. In this study, we used a lipid/polyacetylene (PDA) vesicle sensor as the lipid membrane model to evaluate AuNP-lipid membrane interactions. Based on the colorimetric response (CR) of PDA vesicles before and after incubation with AuNPs, it was found that the interaction was highly dependent on the surface charge of AuNPs. As compared to the positively charged NPs, neutral and zwitterionic NPs adsorbed much less on the lipid membrane. Negatively charged NPs did not induce any noticeable color changes even at high concentrations. A class of cationic AuNPs with different degrees of surface hydrophobicity was further selected to investigate the role of hydrophobicity in interacting with lipid/PDA vesicles, and log(EC50) was employed as the evaluation index. According to the log(EC50)-NP concentration curve, the hydrophobicity of NPs enhanced the lipid membrane affinity, but electrostatic interactions weakened this effect. Finally, different concentrations of bovine serum albumin (BSA) were used to study the effect of the protein corona on NP-lipid membrane interactions. The formation of a NP-protein corona was found to mask the electrostatic interactions, leading to the decrease of the CR values of cationic NPs, and highly hydrophobic NPs were less affected by a low concentration of BSA due to the strong hydrophobic interactions. Although the effect of NP surface properties on their interactions with cells is far more complicated, our study provides a rapid and effective method for the evaluation of the interactions between surface modified AuNPs and lipid membranes.
金纳米粒子（AuNPs）的表面修饰对其与细胞膜的相互作用有显著而复杂的影响。在本研究中，我们使用脂质/聚乙炔（PDA）囊泡传感器作为脂质膜模型来评估 AuNP-脂质膜相互作用。基于 PDA 囊泡在孵育前后的比色响应（CR），发现这种相互作用高度依赖于 AuNPs 的表面电荷。与带正电荷的 NPs 相比，中性和两性离子 NPs 在脂质膜上的吸附量要少得多。带负电荷的 NPs 即使在高浓度下也不会引起任何明显的颜色变化。进一步选择了一类具有不同表面疏水性程度的阳离子 AuNPs 来研究疏水性在与脂质/PDA 囊泡相互作用中的作用，并用 log(EC50)作为评价指标。根据 log(EC50)-NP 浓度曲线，NPs 的疏水性增强了对脂质膜的亲和力，但静电相互作用削弱了这种效应。最后，使用不同浓度的牛血清白蛋白（BSA）来研究蛋白质冠对 NP-脂质膜相互作用的影响。发现 NP-蛋白质冠的形成掩盖了静电相互作用，导致阳离子 NPs 的 CR 值降低，而由于强疏水相互作用，高疏水性 NPs 受低浓度 BSA 的影响较小。尽管 NP 表面性质对其与细胞相互作用的影响要复杂得多，但我们的研究为评估表面修饰的 AuNPs 与脂质膜之间的相互作用提供了一种快速有效的方法。
