Contrasting view on asphaltene and human cardiac troponin I: A surface chemistry and spectroscopy perspective

Surface chemistry has proven in the recent years that it could be used for a variety of applications. In the current work, the surface chemistry and spectroscopic techniques are used to emphasize their great potential in aggregation studies of UG8 asphaltene and the contrasting results for a surface chemistry perspective for the human cardiac troponin I. The first part of the work focuses on the influence of different spreading solvents on the aggregation of UG8 asphaltene and their comparison to the literature on the topic. It is shown that the surface chemistry approach employed in the current work has significant advantages compared to the methods used until today. The second part of the work focuses on the characterization of monoclonal antibodies and human cardiac troponin I and the use of monoclonal antibodies for the detection of human cardiac troponin I that could eventually lead to the development of a fast, cheap and selective bioassay to detect human cardiac troponin I in blood or blood serum. Different avenues are discussed to study the interaction between antibodies and human cardiac troponin I such as air-water interface and surface-bound antibodies. While detection of human cardiac troponin I was successful alternative approaches to improve the sensitivity are proposed.