Interrogating the local environment to obtain information about the spatio-temporal evolution of cellular behavior has been a long-standing goal of colloidal nanoprobes. Such probes should minimally affect cellular behavior and at the same time provide detailed information about cellular structure and metabolic parameters of interest. Here we introduce a class of colloidal hybrid nanomaterials in the form of ultrasmall (diameters below 10 nm) fluorescent core-shell silica nanoparticles that meet these criteria. They consist of a fluorescent dye encapsulating inorganic silica core and a short organic poly(ethylene glycol) shell, and are referred to as Cornell prime dots or simply C’ dots. We have recently learned how to modify the silica core of C’ dots to induce stochastic dye blinking under single laser illumination and without the need for specific imaging buffers, behavior conducive to live-cell optical super-resolution microscopy imaging. Here we will demonstrate how such particles can be used for super-resolution enhanced sensing action thereby providing a wealth of quantitative information about cellular behavior in relatively simple and widely accessible fluorescence microscopy measurements.

Ultrasmall colloidal hybrid materials for super-resolution assistant ratiometric sensing

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

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