Interactions of Nanoparticles with Proteins: Determination of Equilibrium Constants

The behavior of nanoparticles towards proteins is an important aspect across wide areas of nanotoxicology and nanomedicine. In this chapter, we describe a procedure to study the adsorption of proteins onto nanoparticle surfaces. Circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy is utilized to quantify the amount of free protein in a solution, and the experimental information is evaluated to derive equilibrium constants for the protein adsorption/desorption equilibrium. These equilibrium constants are comparable parameters in describing the interactions between proteins and nanoparticles.