Conjugation of biological and carbon nanoparticles for applications in electronics and cell imaging.

摘要

The formation of 1-dimensional inorganic architectures using biological particles as templates has led to the development of composite nanomaterial assemblies with well defined structures and compositions. This work reports an improvement of the method of metal deposition on viruses and virus-like particles based on a two-step chemical modification to introduce a pyridine-based ligand scaffold to the exterior of the protein surface of the tobacco mosaic virus (TMV). Metallic deposition of this modified TMV scaffold provides highly decorated coverage, as well as an increase in the metallic surface coverage by introducing a homogeneous layer of metal to the virus without the need for time consuming genetic modifications to the protein coat. Quantum dots have been extensively studied for applications in cancer cell targeting, imaging, and drug delivery. Carbon-based quantum dots, or Selah Dots, were conjugated with fluorescent dye molecules to improve their fluorescent signal, and cell targeting ligands were conjugated to improve the cell targeting specificity. Preliminary results of cancer cell targeting show that conjugation of these ligands and fluorophores improve the target specificity and enhance the fluorescent signal.