Endothelial-like nitric oxide synthase immunolocalization by using gold nanoparticles and dyes

Ramla Gary; Daniela Amelio; Filippo Garofalo; Gia Petriashvili; Maria Penelope De Santo; Yuen Kwong Ip; Riccardo Barberi

doi:10.1364/BOE.6.004738

Endothelial-like nitric oxide synthase immunolocalization by using gold nanoparticles and dyes

Biomed Opt Express. 2015 Nov 9;6(12):4738-48. doi: 10.1364/BOE.6.004738. eCollection 2015 Dec 1.

Authors

Ramla Gary¹, Daniela Amelio², Filippo Garofalo², Gia Petriashvili³, Maria Penelope De Santo⁴, Yuen Kwong Ip⁵, Riccardo Barberi⁴

Affiliations

¹ Physics Department, University of Calabria, Rende, 87036, Italy.
² Department of Biology Ecology and Earth Science (B.E.ST), University of Calabria, 87030 Arcavacata di Rende, CS, Italy.
³ Physics Department, University of Calabria, Rende, 87036, Italy ; Institute of Cybernetics of the Georgian Technical University, Tbilisi, 0175, Georgia.
⁴ Physics Department, University of Calabria, Rende, 87036, Italy ; CNR-Nanotec UOS di Cosenza, c/o University of Calabria, Rende 87036, Italy.
⁵ Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, Kent Ridge, Singapore 117543, Republic of Singapore.

Abstract

Immunofluorescence is a biological technique that allows displaying the localization of the target molecule through a fluorescent microscope. We used a combination of gold nanoparticles and the fluorescein isothiocianate, FITC, as optical contrast agents for laser scanning confocal microscopy imaging to localize the endothelial-like nitric oxide synthase in skeletal muscle cells in a three-dimensional tissue phantom at the depth of 4µm. The FITC detected fluorescence intensity from gold-nanoparticles-labelled cells was brighter than the emission intensity from unlabelled cells.

Keywords: (170.1790) Confocal microscopy; (280.1415) Biological sensing and sensors.