Molecular Weights of Polyethyleneimine-Dependent Physicochemical Tuning of Gold Nanoparticles and FRET-Based Turn-On Sensing of Polymyxin B

• Published in: Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) Switzerland), 2024-04, Vol.24 (7), p.2169
• Main Authors: Tiwari, Atul Kumar, Gupta, Munesh Kumar, Meena, Ramovatar, Pandey, Prem C, Narayan, Roger J
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Anti-Bacterial Agents; Antibiotics; Aqueous solutions; Chloride; Chromatography; Environmental engineering; Environmental monitoring; Experiments; Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer; fluorescence sensing; FRET; Geometry; Gold; gold nanoparticles; Metal Nanoparticles; Molecular Weight; Nanoparticles; Polyethyleneimine; polyethyleneimines; Polymyxin B; Software
• ISSN: 1424-8220; 1424-8220
• DOI: 10.3390/s24072169

Environmental monitoring and the detection of antibiotic contaminants require expensive and time-consuming techniques. To overcome these challenges, gold nanoparticle-mediated fluorometric "turn-on" detection of Polymyxin B (PMB) in an aqueous medium was undertaken. The molecular weight of polyethyleneimine (PEI)-dependent physicochemical tuning of gold nanoparticles (PEI@AuNPs) was achieved and employed for the same. The three variable molecular weights of branched polyethyleneimine (MW 750, 60, and 1.3 kDa) molecules controlled the nano-geometry of the gold nanoparticles along with enhanced stabilization at room temperature. The synthesized gold nanoparticles were characterized through various advanced techniques. The results revealed that polyethyleneimine-stabilized gold nanoparticles (PEI@AuNP-1-3) were 4.5, 7.0, and 52.5 nm in size with spherical shapes, and the zeta potential values were 29.9, 22.5, and 16.6 mV, respectively. Accordingly, the PEI@AuNPs probes demonstrated high sensitivity and selectivity, with a linear relationship curve over a concentration range of 1-6 μM for polymyxin B. The limit of detection (LOD) was calculated as 8.5 nM. This is the first unique report of gold nanoparticle nano-geometry-dependent FRET-based turn-on detection of PMB in an aqueous medium. We believe that this approach would offer a complementary strategy for the development of a highly sophisticated and advanced sensing system for PMB and act as a template for the development of new nanomaterial-based engineered sensors for rapid antibiotic detection in environmental as well as biological samples.