Development of Nanowire Needle/Electrode for Site-Specific Delivery of Bio-Probes for Intracellular Living Cell Studies

0933223 Yu生物传感/CBET计划的NSF奖项支持伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校的Yu教授的工作，以开发一套强大的，功能性的和易于应用的纳米线针/电极，以及一种用于直接递送痕量但受控量的探针的新颖而强大的方法，例如QD，纳米颗粒和分子探针，以最小的侵入性进入同一细胞或不同细胞的特定区室，绕过内吞途径。更具体地，一种新的纳米制造策略将被应用于纳米线针的实际和经济的制造。电极，从而使其与生物科学实验室中的一般实践兼容，并且易于适应广泛使用。 将设计用于将探针附着到纳米线针/电极表面上的基于硫醇的缀合化学，并随后开发用于实现细胞或亚细胞结构内附着的探针的近瞬时和靶向释放。 我们将进一步证明磁性纳米颗粒的位点特异性递送和磁扭转细胞术的细胞内机械研究，以确定应力传播的异质性，这对于理解细胞的机械转导途径很重要。 因此，这一发展代表了对现有方法的潜在变革性改进，并可以开辟新的途径来召唤创新策略，否则对于活细胞的高级生物学研究来说，这是不切实际甚至不可能的。本提案中开发的新工具将提供给研究界的成员，以大大有利于扩大对细胞生物学中多样化和基本问题的研究。 该项目开发的方法和技术也是学生和公众教育的吸引力主题。

0933223YuThis NSF award by the Biosensing /CBET program supports work by Professor Yu at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to develop a set of robust, functional and readily-applicable nanowire needles/electrodes and a novel and powerful method for direct delivery of a trace but controlled amount of probes, such as QDs, nanoparticles and molecular probes, into the specific compartments in the same cell or different cells with minimal intrusiveness, bypassing the endocytic pathways.More specifically, a new nanofabrication strategy will be applied for the practical and economical fabrication of the nanowire needle/electrode so to make it compatible with the general practice in bioscience laboratory and readily adaptable for broad use. Thiol-based conjugation chemistry for attaching probes onto nanowire needle/electrode surfaces will be designed and later exploited for realizing near instantaneous and targeted release of the attached probes inside cells or sub-cellular structures. We will further demonstrate the site specific delivery of magnetic nanoparticles and the intracellular mechanical studies with magnetic twisting cytometry to determine heterogeneity of stress propagation, important for understanding mechanotransduction pathways of cells. The development represents thus a potentially transformational improvement over the existing methods, and can open up novel venues to conjure innovative strategies, which otherwise would be impractical or even impossible, for the advanced biological studies of living cells. New tools developed in this proposal will be made available for members in the research community to significantly benefit the expanded studies of diversified and fundamental problems in cell biology. The method and technology developed in this project are also appealing subjects for the education of students and the public.