Quantitative study of BSA coating silica nanoparticle

Abstract

© 2014, Springer International Publishing Switzerland. The loading of biomolecules on nanoparticles might be thought of as a first step to design a cargo in drug delivery system. Here, we study a quantity of bovine serum albumin (BSA) surrounding the silica nanoparticle. The silica nanoparticle is modeled as a perfect sphere whereas the BSA is represented by an ellipsoid. On utilizing a continuous approximation, the electrostatic and van der Waals interactions can be analytically expressed. Further, a number of BSA molecules coating on the nanoparticles of various sizes can be simply determined as a function of the protein ring radius. Our finding is in a good agreement found in experiment and this can be a guide to evaluate the number of protein on other type of spherical nanoparticles.