Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Nanomedicine, National Health Research Institutes, Zhunan Town 35053, Taiwan.
Department of Chemistry and Center for Emerging Materials and Advanced Devices, National Taiwan University, Taipei 106319, Taiwan.
Nano Lett. 2024 Sep 11;24(36):11202-11209. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.4c02331. Epub 2024 Aug 29.
Reverse electron transfer (RET), an abnormal backward flow of electrons from complexes III/IV to II/I of mitochondria, causes the overproduction of a reduced-type CoQ to boost downstream production of mitochondrial superoxide anions that leads to ischemia-reperfusion injury (IRI) to organs. Herein, we studied low-coordinated gold nanoclusters (AuNCs) with abundant oxygen-binding sites to form an electron-demanding trapper that allowed rapid capture of electrons to compensate for the CoQ/CoQH imbalance during RET. The AuNCs were composed of only eight gold atoms that formed a Cs-symmetrical configuration with all gold atoms exposed on the edge site. The geometry and atomic configuration enhance oxygen intercalation to attain a d-band electron deficiency in frontier orbitals, forming an unusually high oxidation state for rapid mitochondrial reverse electron capture under a transient imbalance of CoQ/CoQH redox cycles. Using hepatic IRI cells/animals, we corroborated that the CoQ-like AuNCs prevent inflammation and liver damage from IRI via recovery of the mitochondrial function.
逆向电子转移（RET），即电子从线粒体复合物 III/IV 异常回流到 II/I，导致还原性 CoQ 的过度产生，从而促进线粒体超氧阴离子的下游产生，导致器官的缺血再灌注损伤（IRI）。在此，我们研究了具有丰富氧结合位点的低配位金纳米团簇（AuNCs），形成了一个电子需求捕获剂，允许快速捕获电子，以补偿 RET 期间 CoQ/CoQH 的失衡。AuNCs 仅由八个金原子组成，这些金原子形成 Cs 对称构型，所有金原子都暴露在边缘位点上。这种几何形状和原子构型增强了氧的插入，以在前沿轨道中达到 d 带电子缺陷，形成一个异常高的氧化态，以在 CoQ/CoQH 氧化还原循环的瞬时失衡下快速进行线粒体逆向电子捕获。使用肝 IRI 细胞/动物，我们证实 CoQ 样的 AuNCs 通过恢复线粒体功能来防止 IRI 引起的炎症和肝损伤。
