Written by: WANG Xue
Translated by: DU Yufei
Edited by: William Mosteller
Date: 05-08
Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Professor HE Qiang's research team, from the Key Laboratory of Microsystems and Microstructure Manufacturing of the Ministry of Education in HIT, has made the latest progress in the application of synthetic swimming nanomachines to single-cell mechanical perforation. The research results are published in the internationally well-known Journal of the American Chemical Society (Impact Factor 14.357), which is entitled “Gold-Nanoshell-Functionalized Polymer Nanoswimmer for Photomechanical Poration of Single-Cell Membrane”. Associate Professor WU Zhiguang and Professor HE Qiang are co-authors of the correspondence.
Single-cell membrane perforation has become a research hotspot in recent years because of its potential applications in intracellular imaging, gene editing, and artificial insemination. Conventional chemical and physical methods, such as the use of calcium ions to increase membrane permeability, electroporation, and photoporation, can be used for large numbers of cell membrane perforation, but it is difficult to achieve membrane perforation targeting single cells. Swimming nanomechanics is a kind of nano-system that can convert the chemical energy or other forms of energy stored in the surrounding environment into self-propelled motion. It can perform controllable motion in a variety of biological fluids and is expected to achieve active targeting of target cells and complete mechanical perforation.
The team combined nanopore template-assisted layer-by-layer self-assembly with gold seed growth to construct a gold-nanoshell-functionalized tubular polymer multilayer nanomachine. Under exogenous ultrasonic field, the nanomachine can move autonomously in the fluid, actively targeting a single cell. It was found that the synergistic effect of the ultrasonic propulsion force and the autothermal swimming force produced by the photothermal effect of tail gold nanoshells could mechanically open the cell membrane within 0.1 second and allow the exogenous substances rapidly penetrate the cells through the openings. The nanomachine overcomes the problem of insufficient propulsive force to open the cell membrane, and is expected to achieve applications such as active targeting to, drug delivery to, intracellular imaging in, and cell surgery of a single cell.
