Targeted delivery of nanomaterials with chemical cargoes in plants enabled by a biorecognition motif

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 11; no. 1; pp. 2045 - 12
• Main Authors: Santana, Israel, Wu, Honghong, Hu, Peiguang, Giraldo, Juan Pablo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 27.04.2020; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 14/19; 140/58; 147/143; 631/449/447; 631/449/448/1374; 631/61/447; 639/925/350; Arabidopsis - chemistry; Baskets; beta-Cyclodextrins - chemistry; Binding Sites; Bioengineering; Chloroplasts; Chloroplasts - chemistry; Compartments; Confocal microscopy; Cyclodextrins; Fluorescence; Humanities and Social Sciences; Kinetics; Microscopy, Confocal; Microscopy, Fluorescence; multidisciplinary; Nanomaterials; Nanoparticles; Nanostructures - chemistry; Nanotechnology; Organelles; Oxidation-Reduction; Peptides; Peptides - chemistry; Photosynthesis; Plant cells; Plant Leaves - chemistry; Plants - chemistry; Quantum Dots; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Thermodynamics; β-Cyclodextrin
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-15731-w

Current approaches for nanomaterial delivery in plants are unable to target specific subcellular compartments with high precision, limiting our ability to engineer plant function. We demonstrate a nanoscale platform that targets and delivers nanomaterials with biochemicals to plant photosynthetic organelles (chloroplasts) using a guiding peptide recognition motif. Quantum dot (QD) fluorescence emission in a low background window allows confocal microscopy imaging and quantitative detection by elemental analysis in plant cells and organelles. QD functionalization with β-cyclodextrin molecular baskets enables loading and delivery of diverse chemicals, and nanoparticle coating with a rationally designed and conserved guiding peptide targets their delivery to chloroplasts. Peptide biorecognition provides high delivery efficiency and specificity of QD with chemical cargoes to chloroplasts in plant cells in vivo (74.6 ± 10.8%) and more specific tunable changes of chloroplast redox function than chemicals alone. Targeted delivery of nanomaterials with chemical cargoes guided by biorecognition motifs has a broad range of nanotechnology applications in plant biology and bioengineering, nanoparticle-plant interactions, and nano-enabled agriculture. Targeted delivery of nanomaterials to subcellular compartments could allow precision engineering of plant function. Here, Santana et al. show that quantum dots functionalized with a rationally-designed targeting peptide are preferentially delivered to chloroplasts where they can be used to tune organellar redox status.