Developing Hollow-Channel Gold Nanoflowers as Trimodal Intracellular Nanoprobes

Gold nanoparticles-enabled intracellular surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) provides a sensitive and promising technique for single cell analysis. Compared with spherical gold nanoparticles, gold nanoflowers, i.e., flower-shaped gold nanostructures, can produce a stronger SERS signal. Curren...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inInternational journal of molecular sciences Vol. 19; no. 8; p. 2327
Main Authors Ye, Sunjie, Wheeler, May C, McLaughlan, James R, Tamang, Abiral, Diggle, Christine P, Cespedes, Oscar, Markham, Alex F, Coletta, P Louise, Evans, Stephen D
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Switzerland MDPI AG 08.08.2018
MDPI
Subjects
Cytoplasm - chemistry
Cytoplasm - metabolism
Cytotoxicity
dark-field
Fluorescence
Gold
Gold - chemistry
gold nanoflowers
Internalization
Intracellular
intracellular nanoprobes
Macrophages
Metal Nanoparticles - chemistry
Nanoparticles
Nanostructures - chemistry
Raman spectroscopy
SERS
Single-Cell Analysis
Spectrum Analysis, Raman
Surface Plasmon Resonance
Surface Properties
Surfactants
Tags
gold nanoflowers
dark-field
intracellular nanoprobes
SERS
fluorescence
surface plasmon resonance
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Summary:Gold nanoparticles-enabled intracellular surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) provides a sensitive and promising technique for single cell analysis. Compared with spherical gold nanoparticles, gold nanoflowers, i.e., flower-shaped gold nanostructures, can produce a stronger SERS signal. Current exploration of gold nanoflowers for intracellular SERS has been considerably limited by the difficulties in preparation, as well as background signal and cytotoxicity arising from the surfactant capping layer. Recently, we have developed a facile and surfactant-free method for fabricating hollow-channel gold nanoflowers (HAuNFs) with great single-particle SERS activity. In this paper, we investigate the cellular uptake and cytotoxicity of our HAuNFs using a RAW 264.7 macrophage cell line, and have observed effective cellular internalization and low cytotoxicity. We have further engineered our HAuNFs into SERS-active tags, and demonstrated the functionality of the obtained tags as trimodal nanoprobes for dark-field and fluorescence microscopy imaging, together with intracellular SERS.
ISSN:1422-0067
1661-6596
1422-0067
DOI:10.3390/ijms19082327