Emerging Applications of Nanotechnology for Controlling Cell‐Surface Receptor Clustering

Abstract

The spatial organization of cell‐surface receptors plays an important role in defining cell fate. Recently, the development of strategies for the direct regulation of receptor clustering using nanomaterials has aroused enormous interest. In this review, we discuss the mechanisms and features of recently developed nanomaterial‐based strategies to control the nanoscale distribution of cell binding ligands and regulate cell behavior. We expect this review to inspire innovative work on manipulating cell functions by controlling the clustering of cell surface receptors.

DNA nanotweezers for stabilizing and dynamically lighting up a lipid raft on living cell membranes and the activation of T cells

“…2 Recently, DNA nanostructures with lipidic anchors were demonstrated to be promising membrane protein mimics that enable one to monitor molecular encounter events on living cell membranes. [33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41] In the present study, we demonstrate that DNA nanotweezers could stabilize and dynamically light up lipid ras on living cell membranes. The proposed DNA nanotweezers create an exogenous cholesterol-rich region on living cell membranes, which results in the recruitment of raassociated lipids and proteins, and possibly also endogenous cholesterol.…”

RNA Splicing Analysis: From In Vitro Testing to Single-Cell Imaging

“…In situ isothermal amplification without an enzyme such as hybridization chain reaction (HCR) 125,126 has proven to be amenable to the detection of RNA in living cells because the amplification process is mainly based on the hybridization reaction with oligonucleotide probe. 106,107 In addition, cells in a culture dish may have considerably different gene expression patterns with cells in their natural environment and lost the information of histological context. 127,128 It has remained difficult to image RNA in intact tissues with nanoscale precision for defining cell types and states in normal and pathological biological systems.…”

“…RCA utilizes special DNA polymerase to convert the target sequence into a long single-stranded oligonucleotide with thousands of tandem repeats, achieving localized isothermal amplification. 59,104,105,106 The padlock-probe-based RCA method is capable of targeting short RNA and discriminating highly similar sequences of RNA even with singlenucleotide variations, 107,108 prompting us to explore its potential in detection of splicing variants. We first introduced RCA to in situ RNA splicing variant detection and proposed a high-base-resolution approach termed splice-junction-anchored padlock-probe-mediated rolling circle amplification (SpliceRCA).…”

Decoration of Material Surfaces with Complex Physicochemical Signals for Biointerface Applications

“…As to the in vitro properties, the capability to control cell behavior is important in many aspects such as in vitro cell expansion, maintaining the correct phenotype, fundamental cell biology studies, and exploring complex in vivo microenvironments. , Cells in the in vivo environment receive signals from not only various biochemical cues from body fluids but also different physicochemical cues from the extracellular matrix (ECM). Thus, mimicking ECM in vitro is one of the key steps for controlling cell behavior and investigating the role of in vivo microenvironments.…”