Nanometer-Sized Diamond Particle as a Probe for Biolabeling

Abstract

A novel method is proposed using nanometer-sized diamond particles as detection probes for biolabeling. The advantages of nanodiamond's unique properties were demonstrated in its biocompatibility, nontoxicity, easily detected Raman signal, and intrinsic fluorescence from its natural defects without complicated pretreatments. Carboxylated nanodiamond's (cND's) penetration ability, noncytotoxicity, and visualization of cND-cell interactions are demonstrated on A549 human lung epithelial cells. Protein-targeted cell interaction visualization was demonstrated with cND-lysozyme complex interaction with bacteria Escherichia coli. It is shown that the developed biomolecule-cND complex preserves the original functions of the test protein. The easily detected natural fluorescent and Raman intrinsic signals, penetration ability, and low cytotoxicity of cNDs render them promising agents in multiple medical applications.

Surface characterisation of silicon substrates seeded with diamond nanoparticles under UHV annealing

“…Indeed, the diamond nanoparticles are good candidates for the transport of biological molecules to cells [1]. For this application, the main challenge is the control of their functionalisation.…”

Luminescent nanodiamonds for biomedical applications

“…Even after considerable surface treatments, as described above, nanodiamonds have a strong tendency to (re)aggregate in solutions and in cells, and this tendency increases with decreasing size of the nanodiamonds (Eidelman et al 2005;Chao et al 2007;Yuan et al 2009). For biomedical imaging, nanodiamonds should remain separate from one another to facilitate maximal effective reaction and attachment to relevant molecules and to allow for internalisation into cells.…”

“…Acid treatments: Hydrogen plasma treatment (Thoms et al 1994;Strother et al 2002;Knickerbocker et al 2003) -Nitric and sulphuric acid (Kong et al 2005a;Huang and Chang 2004;Liu et al 2008;Chao et al 2007;Ushizawa et al 2002) Annealing in hydrogen gas (Härtl et al 2004;Christiaens et al 2006;Saini et al 2008) -Nitric acid Huang et al 2008;Sushchev et al 2008;Mitev et al 2007) Water vapour treatment (Ando et al 1996a) -Hydrochloric acid (Kossovsky et al 1995;Mitev et al 2007) Borane (BH3) (Krüger et al 2006;Neugart et al 2007;Liang et al 2009;Zhang et al 2009b) -Perchloric acid (Xu et al 2005) -Potassium dichromate and sulphuric acid (Mitev et al 2007) -Sulfuric acid and potassium permanganate (Xu et al 2005) Annealing in:…”

“…The measurement of mitochondrial damage using the methyl thiazolyl tetrazolium assay revealed that the toxicity of nanodiamonds (Schrand et al 2009) in a wide range of cell lines is extremely low (Table 6). In acute conditions, cells tolerate concentrations up to about 400 μg/mL of raw or surface functionalised nanodiamonds in vitro Chao et al 2007;Liu et al 2007;Schrand et al 2007;Faklaris et al 2008;Vaijayanthimala et al 2009), with a decrease by approximately 20% in cell viability in some cancer cells at concentrations of 4 × 10 7 nanodiamonds/mL (Burleson et al 2009). Protein expression ), rates of cellular proliferation and differentiation (Vaijayanthimala et al 2009), as well as rates of apoptosis ) have all been used to show nanodiamond in vitro biocompatibility.…”

“…Optical measurements based on luminescence Chao et al 2007;Chang et al 2008a, b;Faklaris et al 2008Faklaris et al , 2009bLiu et al 2009;Yuan et al 2009;Zhang et al 2009a) or Raman signatures ) have shown that nanodiamonds are internalised and tend to be located in endocytic vesicles, but they do not enter the nucleus. This has been confirmed by transmission electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy (Chang et al 2008a, b;Faklaris et al 2008Faklaris et al , 2009bYu et al 2005;Liu et al 2009;Zhang et al 2009a).…”