Interfacing Biology and Material Science: Discovery and Application of A Versatile Surface-coating Peptide for Rare Earth Nanocrystals
Rare earth nanomaterials hold great promise for a wide variety of biomedical applications, but issues of interfacing with the biological system, such as stable dispersal in water, potential toxicity concern and biocompatibility, remain a major challenge. In the first part of my talk, I will present our recent findings on a novel biological function of rare earth oxide nanocrystals (REOs). Both light and heavy classes of REOs induces autophagy, an intracellular protein and organelle degradation process found in all mammalian cells, in a dose- and time-dependent fashion. Autophagy induction may represent a common response of cells to REOs and warrants special concern for their in vivo applications. Next I will discuss our efforts of employing a biological approach to address some of the interfacing issues mentioned above. Using phage display we identified an 11-amino acid surface-coating peptide that binds REOs specifically and enhances REO’s dispersal in water. While the peptide itself did not alter the autophagy-inducing property of REOs, the addition of an RGD sequence in the peptide effectively abolished the ability of REOs to induce autophagy, pointing to the potential general utility of this RGD peptide for modulating biocompatibility of rare earth nanocrystals. Finally, I will present our preliminary data on utilizing this rare earth crystal-coating peptide as a versatile disperser and linker for upconversion phosphor (UCP) nanocrystals and exploring the application of UCP in homogeneous in vitro diagnostic assays based on a FRET principle.
Yunjiao Zhang Wei Zhou Long-ping Wen
National Key laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale & School of Life Science,University of S National Key laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale & School of Life Science, University of
国际会议
International Symposium on Crystal Engineering and Drug Delivery System 2009(2009晶体工程与药物传送系统国际会议)
天津
英文
371
2009-09-05（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）