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ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

Amphiphilic Helical Peptide Enhances the Uptake of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes by Living Cells

Shook-Fong Chin^*, Ray H. Baughman^*,, Alan B. Dalton, Gregg R. Dieckmann^*,,, Rockford K. Draper^*,,,||, Carole Mikoryak^||, Inga H. Musselman^*,, Vasiliki Z. Poenitzsch^*, Hui Xie^* and Paul Pantano^*,,,1

^* Department of Chemistry and The NanoTech Institute, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas 75080; Department of Physics, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey GU2 7XH, United Kingdom; The Institute of Biomedical Science and Technology and ^|| Department of Molecular & Cell Biology, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas 75080

To whom requests for reprints should be addressed at ¹ Department of Chemistry, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX 75083-0688. E-mail: pantano{at}utdallas.edu

The success of many projected applications of carbon nano-tubes (CNTs) to living cells, such as intracellular sensors and nanovectors, will depend on how many CNTs are taken up by cells. Here we report the enhanced uptake by HeLa cells of single-walled CNTs coated with a designed peptide termed nano-1. Atomic force microscopy showed that the dispersions were composed of individual and small bundles of nano-1 CNTs with 0.7- to 32-nm diameters and 100- to 400-nm lengths. Spectroscopic characterizations revealed that nano-1 disperses CNTs in a non-covalent fashion that preserves CNT optical properties. Elemental analyses indicated that our sample preparation protocol involving sonication and centrifugation effectively eliminated metal impurities associated with CNT manufacturing processes. We further showed that the purified CNT dispersions are taken up by HeLa cells in a time- and temperature-dependent fashion, and that they do not affect the HeLa cell growth rate, evidence that the CNTs inside cells are not toxic under these conditions. Finally, we discovered that ~6-fold more CNTs are taken up by cells in the presence of nano-1 compared with medium containing serum but no peptide. The fact that coating CNTs with a peptide enhances uptake offers a strategy for improving the performance of applications that require CNTs to be inside cells.

Key Words: bionanotechnology • nanoparticles • drug delivery • Raman spectroscopy • HeLa cells

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