Investigation of the interaction between the functionalized mesoporous silica nanocarriers and bovine serum albumin via multi-spectroscopy.

It is well known that the physicochemical properties of nanocarriers, which are closely related to the surface modification of nanoparticles, have crucial impacts on their biological effects. Herein, the interaction between functionalized degradable dendritic mesoporous silica nanoparticles (DDMSNs) and bovine serum albumin (BSA) was investigated for probing into the nanocarriers' potential toxicity using multi-spectroscopy such as ultraviolet/visible (UV/Vis), synchronous fluorescence, Raman and circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy. BSA, owing to its structural homology and high sequence similarity with HSA, was employed as the model protein to study the interactions with DDMSNs, amino-modified DDMSNs (DDMSNs-NH2) and hyaluronic acid (HA) coated nanoparticles (DDMSNs-NH2-HA). It was found that the static quenching behavior of DDMSNs-NH2-HA to BSA was accompanied by an endothermic and hydrophobic force-driven thermodynamic process, which was confirmed by fluorescence quenching spectroscopic studies and thermodynamic analysis. Furthermore, the conformational variations of BSA upon interaction with nanocarriers were observed by combination of UV/Vis, synchronous fluorescence, Raman and CD spectroscopy. The microstructure of amino residues in BSA changed due to the existence of nanoparticles, for example, the amino residues and hydrophobic groups exposed to microenvironment and the alpha helix (α-helix) content of BSA decreased. Specially, through thermodynamic analysis, the diverse binding modes and driving forces between nanoparticles and BSA were discovered because of different surface modifications on DDMSNs, DDMSNs-NH2 and DDMSNs-NH2-HA. We believe that this work can promote the interpretation of mutual impact between nanoparticles and biomolecules, which will be in favor of predicting the biological toxicity of nano-DDS and engineering functionalized nanocarriers.

Facile Cloud Point Extraction for the Separation and Determination of Phenolic Acids from Dandelion.

It is significantly crucial to develop a robust pretreatment for the quantitative analysis of herbs. However, the traditional strategies are time-consuming, tedious, and not eco-friendly. In this work, cloud point extraction (CPE) is engineered for the simultaneous separation and enrichment of ferulic acid (FA), chlorogenic acid (CLA), and caffeic acid (CA) from dandelion prior to its determination by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). A famous nonionic surfactant of Triton X-114 was selected as an extractant of CPE, and parameters affecting the extraction, such as surfactant concentration, salt content, pH value, temperature, and incubation time, were investigated carefully. Furthermore, the well-designed CPE with ultrasonic assistance combined with HPLC was developed for the detection of the target analytes in dandelion. The established method having a good linearity in the range of 0.15-26.2 mg L-1 with R 2 more than 0.9979 and the spiked recoveries ranging from 81 to 96% was applied to test real samples of dandelion. The contents of CA in samples were consistent with those assayed by the method (Chinese Pharmacopoeia 2015). The proposed method afforded good analytical performances, shorter pretreatment time (65 min), and less organic solvent consumption (less than 1.0 mL). It was proved that the developed method presented a facile, inexpensive, efficient, and environment-friendly pretreatment and can be used for the quantitative analysis of CLA, CA, and FA in dandelion. As expected, the proposed method would be a promising potential for the quality analysis of herbal medicines.

Facile fabrication of zwitterionic magnetic composites by one-step distillation-precipitation polymerization for highly specific enrichment of glycopeptides.

Hydrophilic interaction chromatography (HILIC) utilizing zwitterion-modified material as solid phase has attracted extensive attention for selective enrichment of glycopeptides. However, a tedious synthesis and low specificity for glycopeptides have restricted its application. Herein, a facile and effective approach was developed to synthesize a zwitterionic (ZIC) polymer-coated magnetic composites (denoted as Fe3O4@PMSA) with a zwitterion ((2-(methacryloyloxy)ethyl)-dimethyl-(3-sulfopropyl) ammonium hydroxide, MSA) via one-step distillation-precipitation polymerization (DPP). The well-designed composites presented clearly ZIC-polymer shell and superior hydrophilicity (water contact angle 30.2), and the performance for selective enrichment of glycopeptides were investigated with standard and real samples, respectively. Owning to the abundant of ZIC molecules with multi-charge and polar groups on the surface of resulting polymer coating, the Fe3O4@PMSA demonstrated high selectivity for glycopeptides enrichment with IgG digest (twenty glycopeptides identified, S/N ≥ 20) and a mixture of IgG and BSA at the mass ratio of 1:230 (sixteen glycopeptides identified, S/N ≥ 20). Besides, the detection limit as low as 0.67 fmol for IgG (S/N ≥ 10) and satisfied recovery yield more than 74% were achieved by the proposed sorbents. Finally, the Fe3O4@PMSA was applied for enriching N-linked glycopeptides from human serum, and 348 unique N-glycosylation sites and 419 glycopeptides from 158 glycoproteins were strictly identified from 1 µL human serum. The results demonstrated that the proposed Fe3O4@PMSA showed a promising potential in glycoproteomics analysis of real biological samples.

Preparation and characterization of an amphipathic magnetic nanosphere.

The amphipathic magnetic nanospheres were synthesized using C8 and polyethylene glycol as ligands. Their morphology, structure, and composition were characterized by transmission electron microscope, Fourier transform infrared, and elementary analysis. The prepared materials presented uniform sphere with size distribution about 200 nm. The magnetic characteristics of magnetic nanomaterials were measured by vibrating sample magnetometer. The target products had a saturation magnetization value of 50 emu g(-1) and superparamagnetism. The adsorption capability was also studied by static tests, and the material was applied to enrich benzenesulfonamide from calf serum. The results exhibited that the C8-PEG phase owned better adsorption capability, biocompatible property, and dispersivity in aqueous samples.