Developing Hollow-Channel Gold Nanoflowers as Trimodal Intracellular Nanoprobes

International Journal of Molecular Sciences

ChristineP. Diggle¹  AlexF. Markham¹  P.Louise Coletta¹  JamesR. McLaughlan²  StephenD. Evans³  MayC. Wheeler³  Abiral Tamang³  Oscar Cespedes³  Sunjie Ye³ 

[1] Leeds Institute for Biomedical and Clinical Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds LS9 7TF, UK;School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK;School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK;

关键词: gold nanoflowers;    intracellular nanoprobes;    surface plasmon resonance;    SERS;    fluorescence;    dark-field;   

DOI  :  10.3390/ijms19082327

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

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.

【 授权许可】

Unknown