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By optimising various fluorogenic dyes, non-fluorescent fluorescamine can react with primary amines to form highly fluorescent products, which is a simple, fast, and sensitive method for the quantification of albumin. The effects of pH, temperature, and chemicals were studied systematically to quantify albumin. The quantification method is more sensitive at alkaline pHs, affording measurement of proteins concentrations as low as 15 µg mL–1. Denaturation of albumin at elevated temperatures and/or use of chemicals, such as ethanol and acetone, can greatly improve the sensitivity of the albumin detection method. The simple, accurate, and reliable analysis of albumin contents under favourable conditions can be developed as an important method for early diagnosis of kidney disease.

Composite Pd/Fe3O4 (1) was designed and synthesised by immobilization of tridentate pincer ligands with triethoxysilane groups on Fe3O4 nanoparticles, PdII complexation, and in-situ reduction process. The composite was characterised by transmission electron microscopy, scanning electron microscopy energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, powder X-ray diffraction, vibrating sample magnetometer, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, and Brunauer–Emmett–Teller analysis. The composite featured Pd nanoparticles of ~2–4 nm, exhibited good thermal stability and hydrophilic property as well as excellent catalytic activity towards the reduction of 4-nitrophenol to 4-aminophenol in water.

In this study, we employ a range of analytical tools to study the interactions between a mixed base peptide nucleic acid (PNA, 22-mer) probe and gold nanoparticles (AuNP). The binding of charge neutral PNA to citrate capped AuNP (50 nm) causes the particles to change size and/or aggregation/dispersion status in a PNA concentration-dependent manner. Under a UV-vis spectrophotometer, AuNP aggregation can be detected at PNA concentrations as high as 400 nm. Using dynamic light scattering measurement, the changing of particle sizes can be detected at a relatively low PNA concentration of 50 nm. Using a resistive pulse sensor, i.e. nanopore-based sensing platform, a particle-by-particle measurement technique, subtle changes of the AuNP size induced by PNA at very low concentrations of 5 nm can be identified. Transmission electron microscopy measurement confirmed that at very low PNA concentration, a small population of particles form a nano-assembly of NP clusters. Based on the fact that hybridization of PNA probe with target DNA is able to retard particle aggregation, we can quantify specific DNA sequences with a limit of detection ranging from 10 nm to 1 nm, depending on the characterization tools used. With this study, we show that as a complementary technique, the resistive pulse nanopore-based sensing platform provides significant resolution advantages for metal nanoparticle measurement as compared with light-based techniques.