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Researchers have developed a process for creating ultrathin, a synthetic materials that can function like designer flypaper in selectively binding with viruses, bacteria, and other pathogens. The platform, developed by a team led by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), could be used to detect pathogens.
Researchers from New York University, created the synthesized nanosheets at Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Foundry, a nanoscale science center, out of self-assembling, bio-inspired polymers known as peptoids. The sheets were designed to present simple sugars in a patterned way along their surfaces, the sugars, were demonstrated to selectively bind with several proteins, including one associated with the Shiga toxin, which causes dysentery. Because the outside of human cells are flat and covered with sugars, these 2-D nanosheets can effectively mimic cell surfaces.
Numerous pathogens from the flu virus to cholera bacteria bind to sugars on cell surfaces. Picking the right sugars to bind to the peptoid nanosheets in the right distributions can determine which pathogens will be drawn. Clicking on different sugars and presenting them on a planar surface can control how far apart they are from each other, this can be done with can any sugar.
The peptoid platform is also rugged and stable compared to natural biomolecules. Peptoids-an analog to peptides in biology that are chains of amino acids are cheap and easy-to-make polymers. The chemical information that instructs the molecules to spontaneously assemble into the sugar-coated sheets is programmed into each molecule during its synthesis. The sugar-coated nanosheets are made in a liquid solution. If the nanosheets are used to prevent exposure to a pathogen, it could envision the use of a nasal spray containing the pathogen-binding nanosheets.
The nanosheets could be used in environmental cleanups to neutralize specific toxins and pathogens, and the sheets could target viruses like Ebola and bacteria like E. coli, and other pathogens. In the latest study, the researchers confirmed that the bindings with the targeted proteins were successful by embedding a fluorescent dye in the sheets and attaching another fluorescent dye on the target proteins. A color change indicated that a protein was bound to the nanosheet.
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