Sniffing out proteins

A team of scientists from the University of Massachusetts Amherst  have created a kind of molecular nose that uses nanoparticle-based sensors to sniff out and identify proteins.

The sensors, which can be trained to detect a wide variety of proteins, could eventually serve as a tool for diagnosing diseases like cancer by sniffing out the proteins made by sickly cells.

The research appears in the May issue of the journal Nature Nanotechnology, with advance online publication on April 22.

Led by UMass Amherst chemist Vincent Rotello and Uwe Bunz of the Georgia Institute of Technology, several scientists collaborated on the work.

Current methods for detecting proteins usually rely on specific receptors that bind like a lock and key with their specific protein. Researchers fill a tray with these molecular “locks” and see what sticks when they add protein “keys” to the tray. While precise, the technique is costly and in order to detect a particular protein key, you have to have its particular lock.