Journal
ACS NANO
Volume 9, Issue 10, Pages 9986-9993Publisher
AMER CHEMICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.5b03521
Keywords
endocytosis pathway; passive fusion; size-dependent; surface charge; sub-10 nm gold nanoparticles
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Funding
- NIH [EB014277]
- NSFC [31225009]
- China Scholarship Council
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Sciences (JSPS)
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Correlation of the surface physicochemical properties of nanoparticles with their interactions with biosystems provides key foundational data for nanomedicine. We report here the systematic synthesis of 2, 4, and 6 nm core gold nanoparticles (AuNP) featuring neutral (zwitterionic), anionic, and cationic headgroups. The cellular internalization of these AuNPs was quantified, providing a parametric evaluation of charge and size effects. Contrasting behavior was observed with these systems: with zwitterionic and anionic particles, uptake decreased with increasing AuNP size, whereas with cationic particles, uptake increased with increasing particle size. Through mechanistic studies of the uptake process, we can attribute these opposing trends to a surface-dictated shift in uptake pathways. Zwitterionic NPs are primarily internalized through passive diffusion, while the internalization of cationic and anionic NPs is dominated by multiple endocytic pathways. Our study demonstrates that size and surface charge interact in an interrelated fashion to modulate nanoparticle uptake into cells, providing an engineering tool for designing nanomaterials for specific biological applications.
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