Live Intracellular Biorthogonal Imaging by Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy using Alkyne-Silver Nanoparticles Clusters

Abstract

Live intracellular imaging is a valuable tool in modern diagnostics and pharmacology. Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS) stands out as a non-destructive and multiplexed technique, but intracellular SERS imaging still suffers from interfering background from endogenous components. Here we show the assembly of small colloidal SERS probes with Raman signal in the cell-silent window of 1800–2900 cm−1 for biorthogonal intracellular SERS imaging of dopamine that was undistinguishable from the endogenous cell background. By linking colloidal silver nanoparticles with alkyne-dopamine adducts, clusters are formed by 2–6 nanoparticles spaced by tight interparticle gaps that exhibited high electric field enhancement and strong SERS signals of alkyne and dopamines. Due to the cell-silent signals of the alkyne, intracellular in-vitro Raman imaging shows that the dopamines on the internalized clusters remain distinguishable across the cytoplasm with good spatial resolution. Our method can be a general-purpose method for real-time imaging of biomolecules, such as proteins, peptides, DNA and drugs.

Silver Nanoparticles: Synthesis and Application for Nanomedicine

“…Distinguishable hot spots were highlighted by color-dots related to Raman intensity of the akyne 2045 cm −1 band. Reprinted with permission from [ 104 ]. Copyright 2018 Nature Publishing Group.…”

Taking Advantage of the Morpheein Behavior of Peroxiredoxin in Bionanotechnology

“…However, 1D assemblies have potential applications in a variety of optoelectronic, electronic, photonic, and magnetic purposes. 108 For instance, these nanostructures are currently exploited for nondestructive intracellular imaging by Raman spectroscopy, where they are used as nanoprobes in theranostics, e.g., controlled NPs delivery and imaging 107 , 109 and plasmonic photothermal treatment. 68 …”

Coupling phenomena and collective effects in resonant meta-atoms supporting both plasmonic and (opto-)magnetic functionalities: an overview on properties and applications [Invited]

“…Meta-atoms interact via near-field coupling when they are relatively closely packed, that is the inter-particle gap distance is of the order of 10nm, leading to significant spectral shifts of the LSPRs and a modification of their line-shapes due to the hybridization of the modes [120,121]. The simplest of these systems, namely a plasmonic dimer [122,123], can found several applications, such as in near-field mediated strong-coupling interactions [124][125][126], ultrasensitive bio-detection [127] or to study biological processes inside cells through enhanced spectroscopy techniques [ 128]. In the framework of magneto-plasmonics, such near-field interactions were used to increase the control on a plenty of phenomena taking place in magneto-plasmonic meta-molecules.…”