School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK.
Leeds Institute for Biomedical and Clinical Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds LS9 7TF, UK.
Int J Mol Sci. 2018 Aug 8;19(8):2327. doi: 10.3390/ijms19082327.
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.
基于金纳米粒子的细胞内表面增强拉曼光谱（SERS）分析为单细胞分析提供了一种灵敏且有前景的技术。与球形金纳米粒子相比，金纳米花（即花状金纳米结构）可以产生更强的 SERS 信号。目前，由于制备困难以及表面活性剂覆盖层引起的背景信号和细胞毒性，金纳米花在细胞内 SERS 方面的应用受到了极大的限制。最近，我们开发了一种简单且不含表面活性剂的方法，用于制备具有优异单颗粒 SERS 活性的中空通道金纳米花（HAuNFs）。在本文中，我们使用 RAW 264.7 巨噬细胞系研究了我们的 HAuNFs 的细胞摄取和细胞毒性，观察到了有效的细胞内化和低细胞毒性。我们进一步将 HAuNFs 设计成 SERS 活性标签，并证明了所获得的标签作为暗场和荧光显微镜成像以及细胞内 SERS 的多功能三模态纳米探针的功能。
