Protamine assisted rapid synthesis of carbon dots for living nucleolus imaging and gene delivery applications
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Protamine assisted rapid synthesis of carbon dots for living nucleolus imaging and gene delivery applications Kena Zhang1,2, Ge Ma1, Haiqing Wang2, Zhenda Liang1, Li Zhou1,*
, and Bing Yan1,2
1
Key Laboratory for Water Quality and Conservation of the Pearl River Delta, Institute of Environmental Research At Greater Bay Area Ministry of Education, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou 510006, People’s Republic of China 2 School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Shandong University, Qingdao 266237, People’s Republic of China
Received: 20 August 2020
ABSTRACT
Accepted: 2 November 2020
The dynamics of the nucleolus in living cells are important in understanding cellular behavior and malignant transformation. However, construction of a fluorescent probe for long-term monitoring of nucleolus is significantly constrained by the cost, cellular barriers, cytotoxicity, and photobleaching. Herein, a one-pot microwave-assisted synthesis is developed for facile and quick preparation (domestic microwave oven, 7.5 min) of fluorescent carbon dots (CDs) for nucleolus imaging and tracking merely by adding protamine (PTM) into the precursor solution. The as-prepared carbon dots (CD-PTMs) feature photostability, biocompatibility, multicolor emission, and fluorescence enhancement upon binding with RNA. Significantly, CD-PTMs exhibit the capability of crossing both the cytoplasm and nuclear membranes, and located at the nucleolus for long-term (at least 12 h) imaging studies. Moreover, CD-PTMs are demonstrated to be capable of serving as efficient nanocarriers for in vitro transfection applications by taking advantage of the positively charged surface PTM derivative, showing the potential of CD-PTMs as multifunctional nanoprobes for the bioapplications.
Published online: 11 November 2020
Ó
Springer Science+Business
Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Handling Editor: Annela M. Seddon.
Address correspondence to E-mail: [email protected]
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-020-05526-1
4397
J Mater Sci (2021) 56:4396–4406
GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT
Introduction The nucleolus, a place for synthesis and assembly of ribosome subunit, is considered to be closely related to various cell functions such as cell growth, cell-cycle control, senescence, and stress sensing [1, 2]. Recent studies revealed that the dysfunction of nucleolus can induce variations of cell functions and cause various diseases [3, 4]. The state of nuclei is thus regarded as a cellular indicator for real time monitoring of cellular behaviors and pathological processes. However, dynamic tracking of the nucleolus in living cells is not an easy task because designing such imaging probes must meet certain requirements: slight cytotoxicity, ability to cross cellular barriers including cell membrane and nuclear envelope, high specificity to bind with nucleolus and excellent photostability for long-time studies under continuous irradiation [5]. Few probes including fluorescent proteins and commercially available dye SYTO RNA-Select have been developed for specific nucleo
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