Preparation of highly fluorescent CdTe quantum dot-biopolymer in aqueous solution and spectroscopic study of its interaction with bovine serum albumins

Water-soluble fluorescent colloidal quantum dots (QDs) have been widely used in some biological and biomedical fields, so the interaction of QDs with biomolecules recently attracts increasing attention. In thispaper, CdTe quantum dots modified by a natural biopolymer based on polyacrylamide (PAAm) grafted ontosodium alginate (Alg-g-PAAm) were synthesized in an aqueous solution. Then, the binding of the CdTe QDs/Alg-g-PAAm to and bovine serum albumins (BSA) was studied using the fluorescence and UV–visible spectroscopy. The fluorescence and UV–visible data revealed that CdTe QDs/Alg-g-PAAm could quench theintrinsic fluorescence of human serum albumin as well as bovine serum albumins by a static quenchingmechanism. Furthermore, Transmission electron microscopy images revealed that the QDs are nearly spherical in shape with average diameter of 4 nm

Keywords:

CdTeequantum dots , Bovine serum albumin , Fluorescence , Biopolymer