Biomolecular Coronas Provide the Biological Identity of Nanosized Materials

Fundamentally, all interactions between the nanoparticle corona complex and the biological machinery are mediated by physical forces common to all molecular systems. The nanoparticle radius of curvature, if sufficiently high, will also affect the corona directly as large proteins seek to pack around small spaces. The hard-corona structure can also be studied by isolating the particle-corona complexes, and using physical characterization methods that are well known from colloid and interface science. To determine the structure of the hard/soft corona interface in detail requires methods other than those used at present in the field. Screening the biomolecules using antibody and protein microarrays will give information on the different types of binding targets and ultimately the epitopes exposed on corona complexes. The 20 most-abundant proteins identified constitute the majority of the proteins in the ‘average corona’. The abundance of the remaining proteins is, however, not negligible, and the number of such proteins is large.