I am working with Raman imaging of living cells and recently read that you could grow gold nanoparticles intracellularly for improved SERS enhancements and decrease of outflux of the nanoparticles out of the cell. However, since I am using this to measure a substance with rather low Raman signal (even with enhancement) our group has been using MBN coated gold particles creating thus an internal standard. Question is would it be practically possible to grow the particles inside the cell and, also intracellularly, coat them with the MBN sel-assembled monolayer?
You can get some specific nanoparticles grown inside bacteria (to my best knowledge, I came across some papers on that). However, it holds not for all cells and not for all types of NP. But looking at your request from ab initio, you may not need grow NP inside cells as they're readily endocytosed almost all the times although depending on size and surface charge & charge of membrane.The other way to get your job done (enhance optical feedback by Au NP internalised in cells) is to let the NP get into then try to make them self-assembled via hooking to some aptameric macro-molecule like DNA.
Dear Mr. Beletskiy,
Thank you for your answer! Indeed, there is no particular need in my research to grow the NPs intracellularly, however, I was contemplating this option to further improve the signal of our analyte. I will look into your suggestion about aptameric macro-molecules, thank you!
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Chemistry
- Nanotechnology
- Nanostructured Materials
- Nanoparticles