title: Gold labeling of thrombin and ultrastructural studies of thrombin-gold conjugate binding by fibrin.
abstract: Monodispersed thrombin-gold (T-Au) conjugates were prepared by the absorption of a monolayer (3.8 nm thick) of human alpha-thrombin around individual monodispersed colloidal gold particles (16.5 +/- 1.8 nm). Like free molecular thrombin, T-Au conjugates can cause platelet aggregation, plasma clotting, and the release of fibrinopeptides A and B from fibrinogen. At the same thrombin concentration, T-Au conjugates have only one-tenth the fibrinogen-clotting activity of free thrombin and one-third the amidolytic activity of free thrombin. Hirudin can completely inhibit the fibrinogen-clotting activity of both T-Au conjugates and free thrombin, but can inhibit only half of the amidolytic activity of the conjugates. Diisopropyl fluorophosphonate can completely inhibit the fibrinogen-clotting activity and the amidolytic activity of both T-Au conjugates and free thrombin. T-Au conjugates were further characterized by studying the mechanism of their binding to fibrin and the location of the binding site on fibrin. The results of electron microscopic studies showed that T-Au conjugates, but not albumin-Au conjugates, are bound by fibrin. Increasing T-Au conjugate concentrations are associated with an increase in the number of T-Au conjugates binding to fibrin. At 0.1 microM thrombin, 73% of the T-Au conjugates are bound to branch points of the fibrin network with 27% of the T-Au conjugates present in the fibrin strands. At higher thrombin concentration (e.g., 0.5 microM) the percentage of T-Au conjugates bound to locations other than branch points increases to 62%.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
mesh_terms: D001665:Binding Sites; D055598:Chemical Phenomena; D002621:Chemistry; D003102:Colloids; D005337:Fibrin / Q000378:metabolism*; D005340:Fibrinogen / Q000378:metabolism; D006046:Gold; D006801:Humans; D007700:Kinetics; D008854:Microscopy, Electron; D011485:Protein Binding; D013917:Thrombin / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D003102:Colloids; D006046:Gold; D005337:Fibrin; D005340:Fibrinogen; D013917:Thrombin