Fig. 3

Illustration of biocorona formation. These molecules, however, are not all at the same scale, so they are not proportional. Proteins (represented in green), lipids (yellow), carbohydrates (blue), DNA (red), small molecules (grey) and ions form the biocorona in a biological milieu, where different phenomena can co-occur: (i) biomolecule-surface interactions, (ii) biomolecule-biomolecule interactions, for the formation of a mono-, bi- or multi-layer, and (iii) nanoparticle-nanoparticle interactions