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Toxicity of CdTe QDs with different sizes targeted to HSA investigated by two electrochemical methods

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Abstract

QDs have large scale application in many important areas with potential of unintentional exposure to the environment or organism during processing of a nanotechnology containing product’s life cycle. In this paper, two classical electrochemical methods, cyclic voltammetry and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy were applied to investigate the influence of particle sizes of CdTe QDs on their toxicity targeted to human serum albumin (HSA) under simulative physiological conditions. The results show that the toxicity of yellow emitting QDs (YQDs) on HSA is slightly stronger than that of the green-emitting (GQDs) and red-emitting QDs (RQDs). We also compared these two classical electrochemical methods with the traditional fluorescence spectroscopy through the above results. The electrochemical methods may be more accurate and comprehensive to investigate the toxicity of QDs at the biomacromolecular level under certain conditions, though fluorescence spectroscopy is simpler and more sensitive.

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Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by the Chinese 973 Program (NO: 2011CB933600), Fundamental Research Funds for Central Universities (1103005, 1101007), Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University (IRT1030), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central University (2012203020203).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Virology & Key Laboratory of Analytical Chemistry for Biology and Medicine (MOE), College of Chemistry and Molecular Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430072, People’s Republic of China

    Zi-Qiang Xu, Lu Lai, Dong-Wei Li, Ran Li, Chen Xiang, Feng-Lei Jiang & Yi Liu

  2. Department of Chemistry and Life Sciences, Xianning University, Xianning, 437005, People’s Republic of China

    Shao-Fa Sun & Yi Liu

  3. Hubei China Tobacco, 430040, Wuhan, China

    Ran Li

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  1. Zi-Qiang Xu
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  2. Lu Lai
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  3. Dong-Wei Li
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  4. Ran Li
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  5. Chen Xiang
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Correspondence to Feng-Lei Jiang or Yi Liu.

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Xu, ZQ., Lai, L., Li, DW. et al. Toxicity of CdTe QDs with different sizes targeted to HSA investigated by two electrochemical methods. Mol Biol Rep 40, 1009–1019 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11033-012-2142-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11033-012-2142-6

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