In this study, the fluorescent-magnetic nanocomposites were synthesized. The interactions between nanocomposites and bovine serum albumin (BSA) were studied by absorption and FL titration experiments. The experiments show that binding of nanocomposites and BSA may be caused by the formation of QDs-BSA complex. A magnetic separation method was designed to directly demonstrate the interactions between the surface of bifunctional nanocomposites with CdSe/CdS quantum dots (QDs) and biomolecules (BSA and DNA). The fluorescence (FL) labeling on the Escherchia coli (E. coli) cells was also successfully developed for studying the biolabeling of the bifunctional nanocomposites. The results directly reveal that the bifunctional nanocomposites can separate biomolecules and label cells. The studies we have performed showed that the fluorescent-magnetic nanocomposites are proved to be a kind of novel biofuctional materials, which can be used in bioseparation and biolabeling applications. (c) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.