Plasmonic nanostructure-enhanced Raman scattering for detection of SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid protein and spike protein variants

Yi-Jui Yeh; Trong-Nghia Le; Wesley Wei-Wen Hsiao; Kuo-Lun Tung; Kostya Ken Ostrikov; Wei-Hung Chiang

doi:10.1016/j.aca.2022.340651

Plasmonic nanostructure-enhanced Raman scattering for detection of SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid protein and spike protein variants

Anal Chim Acta. 2023 Jan 25:1239:340651. doi: 10.1016/j.aca.2022.340651. Epub 2022 Nov 21.

Authors

Yi-Jui Yeh¹, Trong-Nghia Le², Wesley Wei-Wen Hsiao³, Kuo-Lun Tung⁴, Kostya Ken Ostrikov⁵, Wei-Hung Chiang⁶

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemical Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei, 10607, Taiwan; Department of Chemical Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, 10617, Taiwan.
² Department of Chemical Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei, 10607, Taiwan; Institute of Atomic and Molecular Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taipei, 10617, Taiwan.
³ Department of Chemical Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei, 10607, Taiwan. Electronic address: weshsiao@mail.ntust.edu.tw.
⁴ Department of Chemical Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, 10617, Taiwan. Electronic address: kltung@ntu.edu.tw.
⁵ School of Chemistry and Physics, Centre for Materials Science, Centre for Biomedical Technologies, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, QLD, 4000, Australia.
⁶ Department of Chemical Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei, 10607, Taiwan. Electronic address: whchiang@mail.ntust.edu.tw.

Abstract

Epidemiological control and public health monitoring during the outbreaks of infectious viral diseases rely on the ability to detect viral pathogens. Here we demonstrate a rapid, sensitive, and selective nanotechnology-enhanced severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) detection based on the surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) responses from the plasma-engineered, variant-specific antibody-functionalized silver microplasma-engineered nanoassemblies (AgMEN) interacting with the SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) and nucleocapsid (N) proteins. The three-dimensional (3D) porous AgMEN with plasmonic-active nanostructures provide a high sensitivity to virus detection via the remarkable SERS signal collection. Moreover, the variant-specific antibody-functionalization on the SERS-active AgMEN enabled the high selectivity of the SARS-CoV-2 S variants, including wild-type, Alpha, Delta, and Omicron, under the simulated human saliva conditions. The exceptional ultrahigh sensitivity of our SERS biosensor was demonstrated via SARS-CoV-2 S and N proteins at the detection limit of 1 fg mL^-1 and 0.1 pg mL^-1, respectively. Our work demonstrates a versatile SERS-based detection platform can be applied for the ultrasensitive detection of virus variants, infectious diseases, and cancer biomarkers.

Keywords: Pathogen detection; Point-of-care test; Raman spectroscopy; Rapid diagnosis; SARS-CoV-2; SERS.

MeSH terms

COVID-19* / diagnosis
Humans
Limit of Detection
Nanostructures* / chemistry
SARS-CoV-2
Spectrum Analysis, Raman / methods
Spike Glycoprotein, Coronavirus

Substances

spike protein, SARS-CoV-2
Spike Glycoprotein, Coronavirus

Supplementary concepts

SARS-CoV-2 variants