Institute of Nanophotonics, Jinan University, Guangzhou 511443, China.
Department of Physiology, School of Medicine, Jinan University, Guangzhou 510632, China.
Nano Lett. 2021 Feb 10;21(3):1469-1476. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.0c04644. Epub 2021 Jan 21.
Noninvasive and sensitive thermometry of a single living cell is crucial to the analysis of fundamental cellular processes and applications to cancer diagnosis. Optical fibers decorated with temperature-sensitive nanomaterials have become widely used instruments for biosensing temperature. However, current silica fibers exhibit low compatibility and degradability in biosystems. In this work, we employ spider silks as natural optical fibers to construct biocompatible thermometers. The spider silks were drawn directly from and were decorated with core-shell upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs) via a photophoretic effect. By measuring the fluorescence spectra of the UCNPs on the spider silks, the membrane temperature of a single breast cancer cell was obtained with absolute and relative sensitivities ranging from 3.3 to 4.5 × 10 K and 0.2 to 0.8% K, respectively. Additionally, the temperature variation during apoptosis was monitored by the thermometer in real time. This work provides a biocompatible tool for precise biosensing and single-cell analysis.
对单个活细胞进行无创和灵敏的测温对于分析基本细胞过程以及应用于癌症诊断至关重要。用温度敏感纳米材料装饰的光纤已成为生物传感温度的常用仪器。然而，目前的二氧化硅光纤在生物系统中表现出低兼容性和可降解性。在这项工作中，我们利用蜘蛛丝作为天然光纤来构建生物相容性温度计。蜘蛛丝直接从蜘蛛体内抽出，并通过光泳效应在其表面修饰核壳上转换纳米粒子（UCNPs）。通过测量蜘蛛丝上 UCNPs 的荧光光谱，获得了单个乳腺癌细胞的膜温，绝对和相对灵敏度分别为 3.3 到 4.5×10^-3 K 和 0.2 到 0.8% K。此外，通过该温度计实时监测了细胞凋亡过程中的温度变化。这项工作为精确的生物传感和单细胞分析提供了一种生物相容性工具。
