assessing the effect of surface chemistry on gold nanorod uptake, toxicity, and gene expression.pdfVIP

Gol dNanoro dUptake, Toxicity, an dGene Expression Nanorod toxicity DOI: 10.1002/smll.200700217 Assessing the Effect of Surface Chemistry on Gold Nanorod Uptake, Toxicity, and Gene Expression in Mammalian Cells Tanya S. Hauck, Arezou A. Ghazani, and Warren C. W. Chan* Through the use of various layer-by-layer polyelectrolyte (PE) coating schemes, such as the common poly(diallyldimethylammonium chloride)– Keywords: · gene expression poly(4-styrenesulfonic acid) (PDADMAC-PSS) system, the mammalian · gold cellular uptake of gold nanorods can be tuned from very high to very low · layered materials by manipulating the surface charge and functional groups of the PEs. · nanorods The toxicity of these nanorods is also examined. Since the PE coatings · polyelectrolytes are individually toxic, the toxicity of nanorods coated in these PEs is measured and cells are found to be greater than 90% viable in nearly all cases, even at very high concentrations. This viability assay may not be a complete indicator of toxicity, and thus gene-expression analysis is used to examine the molecular changes of cells exposed to PDADMAC-coated nanorods, which enter cells at the highest concentrations. Indicators of cell stress, such as heat-shock proteins, are not significantly up- or down- regulated following nanorod uptake, which suggests that PDADMAC- coated gold nanorods have negligible impact on cell function. Further- more, a very low number of genes experience any significant change in expression (0.35% of genes examined). These results indicate that gold nanorods are well suited for the