{"doi":"10.1021/acsami.3c09627","title":"Goldilocks Energy Minimum: Peptide-Based Reversible Aggregation and Biosensing","abstract":"Colorimetric biosensors based on gold nanoparticle (AuNP) aggregation are often challenged by matrix interference in biofluids, poor specificity, and limited utility with clinical samples. Here, we propose a peptide-driven nanoscale disassembly approach, where AuNP aggregates induced by electrostatic attractions are dissociated in response to proteolytic cleavage. Initially, citrate-coated AuNPs were assembled via a short cationic peptide (RRK) and characterized by experiments and simulations. The dissociation peptides were then used to reversibly dissociate the AuNP aggregates as a function of target protease detection, i.e., main protease (M pro ), a biomarker for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. The dissociation propensity depends on peptide length, hydrophilicity, charge, and ligand architecture. Finally, our dissociation strategy provides a rapid and distinct optical signal through M pro cleavage with a detection limit of 12.3 nM in saliva. Our dissociation peptide effectively dissociates plasmonic assemblies in diverse matrices including 100% human saliva, urine, plasma, and seawater, as well as other types of plasmonic nanoparticles such as silver. Our peptide-enabled dissociation platform provides a simple, matrix-insensitive, and versatile method for protease sensing.","journal":"ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces","year":2023,"id":346626,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":12,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9581,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":863110,"name":"Maurice Retout","orcid":"0000-0002-8140-6621","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1087456,"name":"Amanda A. Chen","orcid":"0000-0002-7358-222X","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":876513,"name":"Chuxuan Ling","orcid":"0000-0002-1932-9258","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1046127,"name":"Lubna Amer","orcid":"0000-0001-5715-5060","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":476574,"name":"Zhicheng Jin","orcid":"0000-0001-6072-7533","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":876514,"name":"Yu‐Ci Chang","orcid":"0000-0001-6997-9884","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1088014,"name":"Saul Chavez","orcid":null,"position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1088015,"name":"Karen Barrios","orcid":null,"position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1046128,"name":"Benjamin Lam","orcid":"0009-0004-3616-1583","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":311899,"name":"Zhi Li","orcid":"0000-0002-7563-9998","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":619026,"name":"Jiajing Zhou","orcid":"0000-0001-5203-4737","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":454543,"name":"Lingyan Shi","orcid":"0000-0003-1373-3206","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":973237,"name":"Tod A. Pascal","orcid":"0000-0003-2096-1143","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":238364,"name":"Jesse V. Jokerst","orcid":"0000-0003-2829-6408","position":14,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":363684,"name":"Wonjun Yim","orcid":"0000-0002-0242-7898","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":42,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:11:53.085356Z","pmid":"37651748","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}