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Nitrogen-doped carbon dots for wash-free imaging of nucleolus orientation

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Abstract

Carbon dots (CDs) are a rising star in the field of cellular imaging, especially cytoplasmic imaging, attributing to the super-stable optical performance and ultra-low biological toxicity. Nucleolus can accurately reflect the expression state of a cell and is strongly linked to the occurrence and development of many diseases, so exploring bran-new CDs for nucleolus-orientation imaging with no-wash technology has important theoretical value and practical significance. Herein, nitrogen-doped carbon dots (N-CDs) with green fluorescence (the relative fluorescence quantum yield of 24.4%) was fabricated by the hydrothermal treatment of m-phenylenediamine and p-aminobenzoic acid. The N-CDs possess small size, bright green fluorescence, abundant surface functional groups, excellent fluorescence stability and good biocompatibility, facilitating that the N-CDs are an excellent imaging reagent for cellular imaging. N-CDs can particularly bind to RNA in nucleoli to enhance their fluorescence, which ensures that the N-CDs can be used in nucleolus-orientation imaging with high specificity and wash-free technique. This study demonstrates that the N-CDs have a significant feasibility to be used for nucleolus-orientation imaging in biomedical analysis and clinical diagnostic applications.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21705101), Shanxi Provincial Key Research and Development Project (201903D121109) and Natural Science Foundation of Shanxi Province (No. 201801D121040 and 201901D211154).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Environmental Science, and Shanxi Laboratory for Yellow River, Shanxi University, Taiyuan, 030006, People’s Republic of China

    Li Zhang, Zihan Wang, Huiping Wang, Wenjuan Dong, Yang Liu, Chuan Dong & Xiaojuan Gong

  2. College of Food Chemistry and Engineering, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, 225001, People’s Republic of China

    Qin Hu

  3. School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shanxi University, Taiyuan, 030006, People’s Republic of China

    Shaomin Shuang

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  1. Li Zhang
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Correspondence to Chuan Dong or Xiaojuan Gong.

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Zhang, L., Wang, Z., Wang, H. et al. Nitrogen-doped carbon dots for wash-free imaging of nucleolus orientation. Microchim Acta 188, 183 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00604-021-04837-7

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