Labeling of the isolated plant cell walls with CdSe Quantum dots

Abstract

Quantum dots (QDs) are semiconductor nanoparticles with increasing application as fluorescent markers in biology.We investigated structure of the cell walls of different species complexed with CdSe QDs using fluorescence microscopy, fluorescence spectroscopy and FTIR techniques. In the experiments we used the cell walls isolated from three distinct plant species: Arabidopsis thaliana, Acer sp. and Picea omorika. We studied both unlabeled and CdSe-labeled cell walls. Fluorescence spectroscopy and microscopy were used for detection of QDs alone or complexed to the cell walls. Emission spectra were deconvolved using the Nelder–Mead algorithm in Matlab 6.5. We calculated approximate probability distribution (APD) for positions of spectral component maxima. There was certain difference between unlabeled cell walls and those complexed with QDs. The FTIR spectra also show some difference between the complexed and pure cell walls. The results show that structure was changed, but not significantly in reaction with CdSe QDs. These results are promising in context of use of QDs as labels in cell wall studies. The characterization of the complex of cell wall structure with QDs is a part of the study of nanoparticles application in investigations of plant materials.