Autophagy At The Nano-bio Interface

Nanoscience has been entered “the golden age” due to its fast development and invention of various nanomaterials. Currently, great progress has been made not only in nanoscience itself, but also in interdisciplinary of nanoscience with other subjects. Furthermore, the new disciplines and branches have been occurred based on discipline integration.On the other hand, the classic discipline----biology has its further purpose of discipline integration during its development. Biology has been born and developing in human’s learning process of the relationship between human and environment for a long period. The objects, scope and depth of life science research is developing significantly in the initial ten years of this century with the applications of breakthroughs and innovations. At present, two tendencies of life science research are formed. Specifically, mechanisms between nanoparticles and cells, which is the basic unit of individual life, have been aroused wide concern. Therefore, the interdisciplinary of traditional biology and nanoscience is inevitable. In recent years, achievements have been made concerning the characters of nanoparticles(shape, size, qualities and modifications) and frontier biological effects, such as autophagy, cell uptake and enzyme-like activity. Followed these progress, acknowledge of functional nanomaterials and nanobiology are extended obviously. During my whole research, I have been focused on the special aspects of nano-biology as follows: 1. The relationship between the catalase-like activity of functional Fe3O4 nanoparticles and autophagy induction in mode cells. In this study, the autophagy induction by Fe3O4 nanoparticles is not only confirmed, but also explained the autophagy adjustment of the catalase-like activity. During the induction process, reaction oxygen species(ROS) is proved as the most important factor related to autophagy and catalase-like activity of Fe3O4 nanoparticles in mode cells. Meanwhile, the relationship between autophagy and cellular metabolism has been explored according to this mechanism. 2. To study the effect of autophagy induction by different kinds of quantum dots. Furthermore, the postponed effect of Parkinson’s disease can be confirmed by autophagy induction. In this study, a new mechanism of nano-drug interference has been discussed deeply. 3. The difference of cellular uptake with two sizes of polystyrene balls was examined. 40 nm polystyrene nanoparticles were internalized into cells through clathrin pathway in a short time. During this process, exocytosis secretion was not occurred. In stark contrast, 150 nm polystyrene nanoparticles were endocytosed by cells via caveolin pathway. The whole process was slower than clathrin pathway, and exocytosis secretion was obvious. We confirmed that the uptake with different size nanoparticles by cells were different according to these results. Especially,autophagy also played an essential role in both of the different uptake pathways.