High Sensitivity of Nano Instrument Proves Essential for Protein Aggregation Studies

Dr Martin Muschol, Assistant Professor at the University of South Florida’s (USF) Department of Physics and his team are carrying out important research to gain a better understanding of protein aggregation phenomena, including protein crystallisation and amyloid fibril growth. Using the Zetasizer Nano ZS, from Malvern Instruments, the USF researchers have been able to perform temperature controlled static and dynamic light
scattering (DLS) measurements of protein hydration, protein interactions and aggregation kinetics in vitro.

“By enabling temperature controlled measurements, the Zetasizer Nano ZS is particularly suited to our work here at USF,” said Dr Muschol. “With it we have been able to monitor the effect on the hydration of proteins by salt ions in solution, measuring the hydrodynamic radius of proteins down to plus/minus one tenth the diameter of a water molecule. Interestingly we found that neither chaotropic or cosmotropic salt ions affected overall protein hydration up to salt concentrations of 1M.” Having published several papers in the past year alone, data gathered by Dr Muschol and his team will be used to develop models for protein fibril formation, a behaviour thought to trigger degenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease.

Dr Muschol’s team has also had noticeable success in using the Zetasizer Nano ZS to study the nucleation of gold nanoparticles. DLS separatesout the background scattering from small molecular species in gold sols and was therefore able to detect nucleation at a significantly earlier stage than has been possible with other approaches.