The pH-dependent electrostatic interaction of a metal nanoparticle with the MS2 virus-like particles

The electrostatic interaction of metal nanoparticles with viruses is attracting great interest due to their antiviral activity and their role in enhancing the detection of viruses at ultra-low concentrations. We model the MS2 virus devoid of its single strand RNA core using a core-shell model. The dependence of the inner and outer surface charge density on the pH is taken into account in our model of the interaction. Varying the pH causes a change in the sign of the outer surface charge leading to the attractive-repulsive transition in the electrostatic interaction between the MS2 virus and metal nanoparticle at pH = 4.