Study On The Application Of Carbon Dots As Fluorescent Probes In C. Elegans

Carbon quantum dots as a novel fluorescent nanomaterials with carbon as the raw material has many advantages, such as low toxicity, biocompatibility, fluorescence stability and wide sources, which is compared with semiconductor quantum dots,metal quantum dots and traditional fluorescent materials. Therefore, carbon dots has a wide range of applications in the field of biology. Compared with the traditional fluorescent materials, current researches focus mainly on four aspects: the development and utilization of raw materials, the preparation technology, the exploration about emission mechanism and the application of carbon dots.The C-QDs were formed by pyrolysis of NMP cations trapped in the magnesium aluminophosphate zeolite MgAPO-44, which is dissolubility, uniformly distributed and fluorescence stability. C-QDs is rich in O/N functional groups on its surface, which is characterizes by TEM, HRTEM, FTIR. C-QDs also has characteristics of low toxicity and good biocompatibility with physiological evaluation in Caenorhabditis elegans as model for the first time. It proved that C-QDs could be used as fluorescent probes in C. elegans for its fluorescence stability and biocompatibility. In addition,the free radicals have different degrees of fluorescence quenching effects on carbon dots in vitro, and which are showed linear quenching in a certain range, such as hydroxyl radical, superoxide radical, two phenyl hydrazine radical, hydrogen peroxide and so on. It verifies the visibility of free radical quenching of carbon dots and provides visibility a theoretical basis.In this study, we explore the application of carbon dots for its good biocompatibility and fluorescence stability as flurescent probes in C. elegans for the first time, and proves the feasibility of the carbon dots used for the detection of free radicals in vivo. Our results will have reference function on the applications of fluorescent carbon dots in biological field.