A Quantitative Study of the Intracellular Dynamics of Fluorescently Labelled Glyco-Gold Nanoparticles via Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy

摘要

The dynamic behaviour of gold nanoparticles functionalised with glucose (Glc-Au NPs) has been studied here by means of fl uorescence correlation spectroscopy(FCS). Meaningful data on the state of aggregation and dynamics of Glc-Au NPs fl uorescently-labelled with HiLyte Fluor647 (Glc-Au-Hi NPs) in the intracellular environment were obtained. Moreover, the work presented here shows that FCS can be used to visualise the presence of single NPs or NP aggregates following uptake and to estimate, locally, NP concentrations within the cell. FCS measurements become possible after applying a “prebleaching” methodology, when the immobile NP fraction has been effectively removed and thus signifi cant FCS data has been recorded. In this study, Glc-Au-Hi NPs have been incubated with HepG2 cells and their diffusion time in the intracellular environment has been measured and compared with their diffusion value in water and cell media.