Research Center for Applied Sciences, Academia Sinica, 128, section 2, Academia Road, Nankang, Taipei 11529, Taiwan.
J Nanobiotechnology. 2010 Dec 20;8:33. doi: 10.1186/1477-3155-8-33.
Understanding the endocytosis process of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) is important for the drug delivery and photodynamic therapy applications. The endocytosis in living cells is usually studied by fluorescent microscopy. The fluorescent labeling suffers from photobleaching. Besides, quantitative estimation of the cellular uptake is not easy. In this paper, the size-dependent endocytosis of AuNPs was investigated by using plasmonic scattering images without any labeling.
The scattering images of AuNPs and the vesicles were mapped by using an optical sectioning microscopy with dark-field illumination. AuNPs have large optical scatterings at 550-600 nm wavelengths due to localized surface plasmon resonances. Using an enhanced contrast between yellow and blue CCD images, AuNPs can be well distinguished from cellular organelles. The tracking of AuNPs coated with aptamers for surface mucin glycoprotein shows that AuNPs attached to extracellular matrix and moved towards center of the cell. Most 75-nm-AuNPs moved to the top of cells, while many 45-nm-AuNPs entered cells through endocytosis and accumulated in endocytic vesicles. The amounts of cellular uptake decreased with the increase of particle size.
We quantitatively studied the endocytosis of AuNPs with different sizes in various cancer cells. The plasmonic scattering images confirm the size-dependent endocytosis of AuNPs. The 45-nm-AuNP is better for drug delivery due to its higher uptake rate. On the other hand, large AuNPs are immobilized on the cell membrane. They can be used to reconstruct the cell morphology.
了解金纳米粒子(AuNPs)的内吞作用对于药物输送和光动力疗法的应用非常重要。活细胞中的内吞作用通常通过荧光显微镜进行研究。荧光标记存在荧光漂白的问题。此外,细胞摄取的定量估计并不容易。本文通过使用无任何标记的等离子体散射图像研究了 AuNPs 的尺寸依赖性内吞作用。
使用暗场照明的光学切片显微镜对 AuNPs 和囊泡的散射图像进行了映射。由于局域表面等离子体共振,AuNPs 在 550-600nm 波长处具有较大的光散射。通过增强黄蓝 CCD 图像之间的对比度,可以将 AuNPs 与细胞细胞器很好地区分开来。用适配体修饰的 AuNPs 的跟踪显示,AuNPs 附着在细胞外基质上并向细胞中心移动。大多数 75nm-AuNPs 移动到细胞顶部,而许多 45nm-AuNPs 通过内吞作用进入细胞并在内涵体中积累。细胞摄取量随粒径的增加而减少。
我们定量研究了不同大小的 AuNPs 在各种癌细胞中的内吞作用。等离子体散射图像证实了 AuNPs 的尺寸依赖性内吞作用。45nm-AuNP 由于其更高的摄取率,更适合作为药物输送载体。另一方面,大的 AuNPs 固定在细胞膜上。它们可用于重建细胞形态。