Abstract

Copyright © 2013 Pedro Rodríguez et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. In this work we present the preparation and functionalization of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) for the detection of pres-ence of gp63 glycoprotein in the surface of Leishmania genus parasites. AuNPs were prepared by induced laser ablation in a clean and biologically suitable media. The nanoparticles were functionalized with anti-gp63 lgG antibody in order to study the interaction with the glycoprotein component gp63 (63 kDa) present on the membrane surface of Leishma-nia genus parasites. The functionalized AuNPs showed potential as a spectrometric indicator of the parasite existence, both by the detection of the presence of the gp63 in solution and through the specific interaction with the parasites in vitro. The specificity of the study opens a new line of research on the use of modified nanoparticles in the development