Facet selectivity in gold binding peptides: exploiting interfacial water structure.

Peptide sequences that can discriminate between gold facets under aqueous conditions offer a promising route to control the growth and organisation of biomimetically-synthesised gold nanoparticles. Knowledge of the interplay between sequence, conformations and interfacial properties is essential for predictable manipulation of these biointerfaces, but the structural connections between a given peptide sequence and its binding affinity remain unclear, impeding practical advances in the field. These structural insights, at atomic-scale resolution, are not easily accessed with experimental approaches, but can be delivered via molecular simulation. A current unmet challenge lies in forging links between predicted adsorption free energies derived from enhanced sampling simulations with the conformational ensemble of the peptide and the water structure at the surface. To meet this challenge, here we use an in situ combination of Replica Exchange with Solute Tempering with Metadynamics simulations to predict the adsorption free energy of a gold-binding peptide sequence, AuBP1, at the aqueous Au(111), Au(100)(1 × 1) and Au(100)(5 × 1) interfaces. We find adsorption to the Au(111) surface is stronger than to Au(100), irrespective of the reconstruction status of the latter. Our predicted free energies agree with experiment, and correlate with trends in interfacial water structuring. For gold, surface hydration is predicted as a chief determining factor in peptide-surface recognition. Our findings can be used to suggest how shaped seed-nanocrystals of Au, in partnership with AuBP1, could be used to control AuNP nanoparticle morphology.

Structure and properties of citrate overlayers adsorbed at the aqueous Au(111) interface.

One of the most common means of gold nanoparticle (AuNP) biofunctionalization involves the manipulation of precursor citrate-capped AuNPs via ligand displacement. However, the molecular-level structural characteristics of the citrate overlayer adsorbed at the aqueous Au interface at neutral pH remain largely unknown. Access to atomistic-scale details of these interfaces will contribute much needed insight into how AuNPs can be manipulated and exploited in aqueous solution. Here, the structures of such citrate overlayers adsorbed at the aqueous Au(111) interface at pH 7 are predicted and characterized using atomistic molecular dynamics simulations, for a range of citrate surface densities. We find that the overlayers are disordered in the surface density range considered, and that many of their key characteristics are invariant with surface density. In particular, we predict the overlayers to have 3-D, rather than 2-D, morphologies, with the anions closest to the gold surface being oriented with their carboxylate groups pointing away from the surface. We predict both striped and island morphologies for our overlayers, depending on the citrate surface density, and in all cases we find bare patches of the gold surface are present. Our simulations suggest that both citrate-gold adsorption and citrate-counterion pairing contribute to the stability of these citrate overlayer morphologies. We also calculate the free energy of adsorption at the aqueous Au(111) interface of a single citrate molecule, and compare this with the corresponding value for a single arginine molecule. These findings enable us to predict the conditions under which ligand displacement of surface-adsorbed citrate by arginine may take place. Our findings represent the first steps toward elucidating a more elaborate, detailed atomistic-scale model relating to the biofunctionalization of citrate-capped AuNPs.

Structure of arginine overlayers at the aqueous gold interface: implications for nanoparticle assembly.

Adsorption of small biomolecules onto the surface of nanoparticles offers a novel route to generation of nanoparticle assemblies with predictable architectures. Previously, ligand-exchange experiments on citrate-capped gold nanoparticles with the amino acid arginine were reported to support linear nanoparticle assemblies. Here, we use a combination of atomistic modeling with experimental characterization to explore aspects of the assembly hypothesis for these systems. Using molecular simulation, we probe the structural and energetic characteristics of arginine overlayers on the Au(111) surface under aqueous conditions at both low- and high-coverage regimes. In the low-density regime, the arginines lie flat on the surface. At constant composition, these overlayers are found to be lower in energy than the densely packed films, although the latter case appears kinetically stable when arginine is adsorbed via the zwitterion group, exposing the charged guanidinium group to the solvent. Our findings suggest that zwitterion-zwitterion hydrogen bonding at the gold surface and minimization of the electrostatic repulsion between adjacent guanidinium groups play key roles in determining arginine overlayer stability at the aqueous gold interface. Ligand-exchange experiments of citrate-capped gold nanoparticles with arginine derivatives agmatine and N-methyl-l-arginine reveal that modification at the guanidinium group significantly diminishes the propensity for linear assembly of the nanoparticles.

Biomolecular adsorption at aqueous silver interfaces: first-principles calculations, polarizable force-field simulations, and comparisons with gold.

The molecular simulation of biomolecules adsorbed at noble metal interfaces can assist in the development of bionanotechnology applications. In line with advances in polarizable force fields for adsorption at aqueous gold interfaces, there is scope for developing a similar force field for silver. One way to accomplish this is via the generation of in vacuo adsorption energies calculated using first-principles approaches for a wide range of different but biologically relevant small molecules, including water. Here, we present such first-principles data for a comprehensive range of bio-organic molecules obtained from plane-wave density functional theory calculations using the vdW-DF functional. As reported previously for the gold force field, GolP-CHARMM (Wright, L. B.; Rodger, P. M.; Corni, S.; Walsh, T. R. GolP-CHARMM: first-principles based force-fields for the interaction of proteins with Au(111) and Au(100). J. Chem. Theory Comput. 2013, 9, 1616-1630), we have used these data to construct a a new force field, AgP-CHARMM, suitable for the simulation of biomolecules at the aqueous Ag(111) and Ag(100) interfaces. This force field is derived to be consistent with GolP-CHARMM such that adsorption on Ag and Au can be compared on an equal footing. Our force fields are used to evaluate the water overlayer stability on both silver and gold, finding good agreement with known behaviors. We also calculate and compare the structuring (spatial and orientational) of liquid water adsorbed at both silver and gold. Finally, we report the adsorption free energy of a range of amino acids at both the Au(111) and Ag(111) aqueous interfaces, calculated using metadynamics. Stronger adsorption on gold was noted in most cases, with the exception being the carboxylate group present in aspartic acid. Our findings also indicate differences in the binding free energy profile between silver and gold for some amino acids, notably for His and Arg. Our analysis suggests that the relatively stronger structuring of the first water layer on silver, relative to gold, could give rise to these differences.

Efficient conformational sampling of peptides adsorbed onto inorganic surfaces: insights from a quartz binding peptide.

Harnessing the properties of biomolecules, such as peptides, adsorbed on inorganic surfaces is of interest to many cross-disciplinary areas of science, ranging from biomineralisation to nanomedicine. Key to advancing research in this area is determination of the peptide conformation(s) in its adsorbed state, at the aqueous interface. Molecular simulation is one such approach for accomplishing this goal. In this respect, use of temperature-based replica-exchange molecular dynamics (T-REMD) can yield enhanced sampling of the interfacial conformations, but does so at great computational expense, chiefly because of the need to include an explicit representation of water at the interface. Here, we investigate a number of more economical variations on REMD, chiefly those based on Replica Exchange with Solvent Tempering (REST), using the aqueous quartz-binding peptide S1-(100) α-quartz interfacial system as a benchmark. We also incorporate additional implementation details specifically targeted at improving sampling of biomolecules at interfaces. We find the REST-based variants yield configurational sampling of the peptide-surface system comparable with T-REMD, at a fraction of the computational time and resource. Our findings also deliver novel insights into the binding behaviour of the S1 peptide at the quartz (100) surface that are consistent with available experimental data.

GolP-CHARMM: First-Principles Based Force Fields for the Interaction of Proteins with Au(111) and Au(100).

Computational simulation of peptide adsorption at the aqueous gold interface is key to advancing the development of many applications based on gold nanoparticles, ranging from nanomedical devices to smart biomimetic materials. Here, we present a force field, GolP-CHARMM, designed to capture peptide adsorption at both the aqueous Au(111) and Au(100) interfaces. The force field, compatible with the bio-organic force field CHARMM, is parametrized using a combination of experimental and first-principles data. Like its predecessor, GolP (Iori, F.; et al. J. Comput. Chem.2009, 30, 1465), this force field contains terms to describe the dynamic polarization of gold atoms, chemisorbing species, and the interaction between sp(2) hybridized carbon atoms and gold. A systematic study of small molecule adsorption at both surfaces using the vdW-DF functional (Dion, M.; et al. Phys. Rev. Lett.2004, 92, 246401-1. Thonhauser, T.; et al. Phys. Rev. B2007, 76, 125112) is carried out to fit and test force field parameters and also, for the first time, gives unique insights into facet selectivity of gold binding in vacuo. Energetic and spatial trends observed in our DFT calculations are reproduced by the force field under the same conditions. Finally, we use the new force field to calculate adsorption energies, under aqueous conditions, for a representative set of amino acids. These data are found to agree with experimental findings.

First-principles molecular dynamics simulations of NH4(+) and CH3COO(-) adsorption at the aqueous quartz interface.

The ability to exert molecular-level control at the aqueous interface between biomolecules and inorganic substrates is pivotal to advancing applications ranging from sustainable manufacturing to targeted therapeutics. Progress is hindered by a lack of structural information of these interfaces with atomic resolution. Molecular simulation is one approach to obtain such data, but can be limited by the reliability of the force-field used. First-principles simulations, in principle, can provide insights into such aqueous interfaces, but are resource-intensive, limiting previous first-principles studies to approximate the environment of liquid water. Here, we use Car-Parrinello simulations to investigate adsorption of two charged adsorbates that are functional groups common to all amino-acids--ethanoate and ammonium--at the interface between hydroxylated quartz and liquid water, directly incorporating full solvation effects at the interface. Our findings reveal the stable character of carboxylate-quartz binding, as well as the surprisingly indifferent nature of ammonium-quartz interactions, in liquid water.