Measurement of protein binding with vastly improved time resolution using a quartz crystal microbalance driven at a fixed frequency

• Introduction: Quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) is commonly used to study biomolecular binding by measuring shifts in resonance frequency of a quartz-crystal-oscillator. However, the currently used methods like impedance analysis or QCM-D, which require repeated sweeps or ringing, are limited in time resolution (~1 second) due to the need for averaging. This restricts our ability to study transient biomolecular processes, which occur in sub-millisecond time scale. A novel technique has been reported here that allows quantification of resonance frequency of a quartz-crystal-oscillator with significantly improved time resolution by driving and measuring continuously at a constant frequency within the resonance bandwidth. Method: The reactive component of the experimentally obtained impedance is utilized for the estimation of resonance frequency from the Butterworth Van-dyke (BVD) model of a quartz-crystal-oscillator, assuming that changes in motional inductance and capacitance around resonance are negligible. Triplicate sets of experiments involving the binding of streptavidin with a biotin functionalized 14.3 MHz quartz oscillator surface were performed. Intermittent frequency sweeps and fixed frequency drives, both of 0.1 second duration and around 14.3 MHz, were taken at intervals of 2 minutes under the flow of phosphate-buffer-saline (PBS buffer) before and after injection of streptavidin. Results: The average shift in resonance frequency from the baseline (measurements before streptavidin injection) due to streptavidin-biotin binding, calculated from the fixed frequency drive or FFD (148 Hz) was within 1% of that estimated from the frequency sweep method by fitting the experimentally recorded impedance employing the BVD model (149 Hz). Discussion: The agreement of the FFD with conventional frequency sweep method suggests that protein binding can be quantified with reasonable accuracy from each impedance data point, which with our set-up is recorded at 30 kHz sampling rate. This gives a time resolution of 0.03 millisecond, which is about 4 orders of magnitude improvement over the state-of-the-art.

Ämnesord

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Medicinteknik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Medical Engineering (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Bioteknologi

Biotechnology

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