Biomolecular Interactions and Biological Responses of Emerging Two-Dimensional Materials and Aromatic Amino Acid Complexes

The present work experimentally investigates the interaction of aromatic amino acids viz., tyrosine, tryptophan, and phenylalnine with novel two-dimensional (2D) materials including graphene, graphene oxide (GO), and boron nitride (BN). Photoluminescence, micro-Raman spectroscopy, and cyclic voltammetry were employed to investigate the nature of interactions and possible charge transfer between 2D materials and amino acids. Graphene and GO were found to interact strongly with aromatic amino acids through pi-pi stacking, charge transfer, and H-bonding. Particularly, it was observed that both physi and chemisorption are prominent in the interactions of GO/graphene with phenylalanine and tryptophan while tyrosine exhibited strong chemisorption on graphene and GO. In contrast, BN exhibited little or no interactions, which could be attributed to localized pi-electron clouds around N atoms in BN lattice. Lastly, the adsorption of amino acids on 2D materials was observed to considerably change their biological response in terms of reactive oxygen species generation. More importantly, these changes in the biological response followed the same trends observed in the physi and chemisorption measurements.