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Published online: 4 March 2009 | doi:10.1038/nchina.2009.39

Nanomaterials: Penetrating plants

Tim Reid

Introduction

© (2009) ACS

Many researchers have proposed using carbon nanotubes to deliver drugs into mammalian cells, because they are generally non-toxic and can pass through cell membranes. Fewer have looked at using nanotubes with plant cells, although there are many potential applications for genetics. Xiaohong Fang and co-workers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing¹ have now used carbon nanotubes to penetrate through the cell wall in plants to deliver small dye molecules and DNA.

Fang and co-workers prepared two batches of single-walled carbon nanotubes — one bound to fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC) dye molecules and the other bound to single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) — and incubated them with live tobacco plant cells. Neither FITC molecules nor ssDNA were taken up into cells on their own, but both were readily engulfed by the cells when bound to nanotubes.

The FITC-bound nanotubes were found to accumulate in the cell's vacuoles — fluid sacs that store engulfed material (pictured top). However, ssDNA-bound nanotubes were found mainly in the surrounding cytoplasm (pictured bottom). The researchers are unsure why this happens, but have illustrated for the first time that nanotubes can deliver different molecular cargos to different intracellular organelles in plant cells.

The authors of this work are from:
Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Key Laboratory of Molecular Nanostructures and Nanotechnology, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China; Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.

Reference

1. Liu, Q. et al. Carbon nanotubes as molecular transporters for walled plant cells. Nano Lett. doi:10.1021/nl803083u (2009). | Article |