Effects of size and surface functionalization of zinc oxide (ZnO) particles on interactions with bovine serum albumin (BSA)

In this work, the behavior of bovine serum albumin (BSA) interacting with zinc oxide (ZnO) particles functionalized with 3-mercaptopropionic acid (3-MPA) and without any coating has been investigated. Two kinds of ZnO particles of different size and morphology were obtained: microwires (MW) and nanoparticles (NP). The effect of surface modification on the fluorescence properties of ZnO was studied. Typical ZnO green emission due to defects was not observed in the functionalized NP spectrum. Structure alterations of the protein interacting with ZnO particles were evaluated by fluorescence spectroscopy and circular dichroism (CD). Though BSA structure was not significantly perturbed in any case, some conformational changes were observed for BSA interacting with not functionalized MW.