Mechanism of Immobilized Protein A Binding to Immunoglobulin G on Nanosensor Array Surfaces

Protein A is often used for the purification and detection of antibodies such as immunoglobulin G (IgG) because of its quadrivalent domains that bind to the Fc region of these macromolecules. However, the kinetics and thermodynamics of the binding to many sensor surfaces have eluded mechanistic description due to complexities associated with multivalent interactions. In this work, we use a near-infrared (nIR) fluorescent single-walled carbon nanotube sensor array to obtain the kinetics of IgG binding to protein A, immobilized using a chelated Cu(2+)/His-tag chemistry to hydrogel dispersed sensors. A bivalent binding mechanism is able to describe the concentration dependence of the effective dissociation constant, KD,eff, which varies from 100 pM to 1 μM for IgG concentrations from 1 ng mL(-1) to 100 μg mL(-1), respectively. The mechanism is shown to describe the unusual concentration-dep…