Nanodiamond Landmarks for Subcellular Multimodal Optical and Electron Imaging

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 3; no. 1; p. 2668
• Main Authors: Zurbuchen, Mark A., Lake, Michael P., Kohan, Sirus A., Leung, Belinda, Bouchard, Louis-S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 16.09.2013; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 631/1647/245; 631/61/350/354; 639/301/930/2735; 692/53/2421; Antibodies; Biocompatibility; Biomarkers; Cell division; Cytoplasm; Cytotoxicity; Diffraction; Drug delivery; Fluorescent indicators; HeLa Cells; Humanities and Social Sciences; Humans; Lifetime; Localization; Microscopy; Microscopy, Fluorescence; Molecular Imaging - methods; multidisciplinary; Nanodiamonds - chemistry; Nanodiamonds - ultrastructure; Nanoparticles; Quantum dots; Science
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/srep02668

There is a growing need for biolabels that can be used in both optical and electron microscopies, are non-cytotoxic and do not photobleach. Such biolabels could enable targeted nanoscale imaging of sub-cellular structures and help to establish correlations between conjugation-delivered biomolecules and function. Here we demonstrate a sub-cellular multi-modal imaging methodology that enables localization of inert particulate probes, consisting of nanodiamonds having fluorescent nitrogen-vacancy centers. These are functionalized to target specific structures and are observable by both optical and electron microscopies. Nanodiamonds targeted to the nuclear pore complex are rapidly localized in electron-microscopy diffraction mode to enable “zooming-in” to regions of interest for detailed structural investigations. Optical microscopies reveal nanodiamonds for in-vitro tracking or uptake-confirmation. The approach is general, works down to the single nanodiamond level and can leverage the unique capabilities of nanodiamonds, such as biocompatibility, sensitive magnetometry and gene and drug delivery.