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Oxidization of carbon nanotubes by a mixed acid has been utilized as a standard method to functionalize carbon nanomaterials for years. Here, the products obtained from carbon nanotubes and graphite after a mixed-acid treatment are carefully studied. Nearly identical carbon dot (Cdot) products with diameters of 3-4 nm are produced using this approach from a variety of carbon starting materials, including single-walled carbon nanotubes, multiwalled carbon nanotubes, and graphite. These Cdots exhibit strong yellow fluorescence under UV irradiation and shifted emission peaks as the excitation wavelength is changed. In vivo fluorescence imaging with Cdots is then demonstrated in mouse experiments, by using varied excitation wavelengths including some in the near-infrared (NIR) region. Furthermore, in vivo biodistribution and toxicology of those Cdots in mice over different periods of time are studied; no noticeable signs of toxicity for Cdots to the treated animals are discovered. This work provides a facile method to synthesize Cdots as safe non-heavy-metal-containing fluorescent nanoprobes, promising for applications in biomedical imaging.

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The understanding of interactions between nanomaterials and biomolecules is of fundamental importance to the area of nanobiotechnology. Graphene and its derivative, graphene oxide (GO), are two-dimensional (2-D) nanomaterials with interesting physical and chemical properties and have been widely explored in various directions of biomedicine in recent years. However, how functionalized GO interacts with bioactive proteins such as enzymes and its potential in enzyme engineering have been rarely explored. In this study, we carefully investigated the interactions between serine proteases and GO functionalized with different amine-terminated polyethylene glycol (PEG). Three well-characterized serine proteases (trypsin, chymotrypsin, and proteinase K) with important biomedical and industrial applications were analyzed. It is found that these PEGylated GOs could selectively improve trypsin activity and thermostability (60-70% retained activity at 80 °C), while exhibiting barely any effect on chymotrypsin or proteinase K. Detailed investigation illustrates that the PEGylated GO-induced acceleration is substrate-dependent, affecting only phosphorylated protein substrates, and that at least up to 43-fold increase could be achieved depending on the substrate concentration. This unique phenomenon, interestingly, is found to be attributed to both the terminal amino groups on polymer coatings and the 2-D structure of GO. Moreover, an enzyme-based bioassay system is further demonstrated utilizing our GO-based enzyme modulator in a proof-of-concept experiment. To our best knowledge, this work is the first success of using functionalized GO as an efficient enzyme positive modulator with great selectivity, exhibiting a novel potential of GO, when appropriately functionalized, in enzyme engineering as well as enzyme-based biosensing and detection.