The identification and treatment of bacterial infections remains a major healthcare challenge, especially to ensure appropriate application of a limited spectrum of antibiotics. Therefore the development of alternatives to antibiotics and new analytical tools to probe pathogenic infection processes and as point-of-care biosensors is crucial to combat the spread of infectious diseases. Glycopolymers offer many opportunities for interfacing synthetic materials with biological systems. However, the nature of the interactions between glycopolymers and their biological targets, lectins, and the structural features necessary to obtain high-affinity materials are not fully understood. The application of synthetic glycopolymers to anti-adhesive therapies has so far been limited by their lack of lectin specificity. Herein a number of tandem post-polymerisation modification methods are utilised to probe the multivalent inhibition of a bacterial toxin as a function of linker length, carbohydrate density, and glycopolymer chain length. Guided by structural-biology information, the binding-pocket depth of the toxin was probed and used as a means to specifically improve inhibition of the toxin by the glycopolymer. Glycosylated gold nanoparticles that change colour due to lectin-mediated aggregation may find use as biosensors to aid in the detection of infectious diseases and biological warfare agents such as ricin. Here, carbohydrate-functionalised, gold nanoparticles have been used to discriminate between lectins and bacterial phenotypes. Optimisation of the particle coating is required to ensure stability in complex media, but still allow for rapid detection readouts.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:655600 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Richards, Sarah-Jane |
| Publisher | University of Warwick |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/69277/ |
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