Real-time study on erythrocyte endocytosing Ag@AuNPs by surface-enhanced raman scattering

Tracking the process which erythrocyte endocytoses gold core-silver shell nanoparticles wrapped in crystal violet with laser optical tweezers raman technique was studied. The erythrocytes were imprisoned by optical tweezers every 20 s, the raman spectra of erythrocytes and the adjacent solutions were collected. Results show that the collected spectra of erythrocytes include the characteristic peaks of erythrocyte and crystal violet.The intensity of peaks belonging to erythrocyte of 1 001, 1 128, 1 213 cm-1 and which belonging to crystal violet of 915, 1 177, 1 370, 1 586, 1 619 cm-1increase over time, which show that in the process of co-culture with erythrocytes and nanoparticles, nanoparticles could increase the signal of erythrocyte and be accumulated in erythrocytes. By analyzing the difference of spectra value between erythrocytes and its adjacent solutions, it finds that spectral characteristic peaks belonging to crystal violet of 913, 1 179, 1 586 cm-1 changing like cosine with time, which suggested that the nanoparticles in erythrocyte induced after first increased, and then increased again. The time range where nanoparticles began to enter erythrocyte, the entering speed and the rate of lysosome degrading nanoparticles wrapped in crystal were caculated. This study shows that surface-enhanced raman spectroscopy can provide a new idea and an experimental method for the study of foreign objects into to cells. ©, 2015, Chinese Optical Society. All right reserved.