Carbon quantum dots (CQDs) require systemic biological delivery to advance their applications in drug delivery, biosensing, and bioimaging. We describe the endocytic pathways of green-emitting fluorescent carbon quantum dots (GCQDs) with sizes varying from 3 to 5 nm in mouse tissue-derived primary cells, tissues, and zebrafish embryos. The GCQDs demonstrated cellular internalization into mouse kidney and liver primary cells via a clathrin-mediated pathway. Using imaging, we were able to identify and reinforce the animal's body features in terms of different tissues exhibiting differential affinity for these CQDs, which will be extremely beneficial in the development of next-generation bioimaging and therapeutic scaffolds based on carbon-based quantum dots.
Keywords: carbon quantum dots; clathrin-mediated pathway; endocytosis; nanomaterial; nanoparticles; tissue-derived primary cells.