Chiral cysteine selective transport of proteins by CdS nanostructures modified anodic aluminum oxide template

Biomolecule-mediated chiral nanostructures: a review of chiral mechanism and application

The chirality of biomolecules is vital importance in biosensing and biomedicine. However, most biomolecules only have a chiral response in the ultraviolet region, and the corresponding chiral signal is weak. In recent years, inorganic nanomaterials can adjust chiral light signals to the visible and near-infrared regions and enhance optical signals due to their high polarizability and adjustable morphology-dependent optical properties. Nonetheless, inorganic nanomaterials usually lack specificity to identify targets, and have strong toxicity when applied in organisms. The combination of chiral biomolecules and inorganic nanomaterials offers a way to solve these problems. Because chiral biomolecules, such as DNA, amino acids, and peptides, have programmability, specific recognition, excellent biocompatibility, and strong binding force to inorganic nanomaterials. Biomolecule-mediated chiral nanostructures show specific recognition of targets, extremely low biological toxicity and adjustable optical activity by regulating, assembling and inducing inorganic nanomaterials. Therefore, biomolecule-mediated chiral nanostructures have received widespread attention, including chiral biosensing, enantiomers recognition and separation, biological diagnosis and treatment, chiral catalysis, and circular polarization of chiral metamaterials. This review mainly introduces the three chiral mechanisms of biomolecule-mediated chiral nanostructures, lists some important applications at present, and discusses the development prospects of biomolecule-mediated chiral nanostructures.

Chirality at the Nanoparticle Surface: Functionalization and Applications

Chiral molecules, such as amino acids and carbohydrates, are the building blocks of nature. As a consequence, most natural supramolecular structures, such as enzymes and receptors, are able to distinguish among different orientations in space of functional groups, and enantiomers of chiral drugs usually have different pharmacokinetic properties and physiological effects. In this regard, the ability to recognize a single enantiomer from a racemic mixture is of paramount importance. Alternatively, the capacity to synthetize preferentially one enantiomer over another through a catalytic process can eliminate (or at least simplify) the subsequent isolation of only one enantiomer. The advent of nanotechnology has led to noteworthy improvements in many fields, from material science to nanomedicine. Similarly, nanoparticles functionalized with chiral molecules have been exploited in several fields. In this review, we report the recent advances of the use of chiral nanoparticles grouped in four major areas, i.e., enantioselective recognition, asymmetric catalysis, biosensing, and biomedicine.