Issue 18, 2016

Ultrastable BSA-capped gold nanoclusters with a polymer-like shielding layer against reactive oxygen species in living cells

Abstract

The prevalence of reactive oxygen species (ROS) production and the enzyme-containing intracellular environment could lead to the fluorescence quenching of bovine serum albumin (BSA)-capped gold nanoclusters (AuNCs). Here we report an efficient strategy to address this issue, where a polymer-like shielding layer is designed to wrap around the Au core to significantly improve the stability of AuNCs against ROS and protease degradation. The key of our design is to covalently incorporate a thiolated AuNC into the BSA-AuNC via carbodiimide-activated coupling, leading to the formation of a AuNC pair inside the cross-linked BSA molecule. The as-designed paired AuNCs in BSA (or BSA-p-AuNCs for short) show improved performances in living cells.

Graphical abstract: Ultrastable BSA-capped gold nanoclusters with a polymer-like shielding layer against reactive oxygen species in living cells

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
16 Mar 2016
Accepted
02 Apr 2016
First published
07 Apr 2016

Nanoscale, 2016,8, 9614-9620

Ultrastable BSA-capped gold nanoclusters with a polymer-like shielding layer against reactive oxygen species in living cells

W. Zhou, Y. Cao, D. Sui, W. Guan, C. Lu and J. Xie, Nanoscale, 2016, 8, 9614 DOI: 10.1039/C6NR02178F

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements