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Designing Greener Nanomaterials
The overarching goal of this research thrust is to formulate structure-property relationships for the biological impact of engineered nanoparticles and to apply these relationships to the design of new materials with tailored properties. By studying the potential toxicological effects of nanoparticles before they are incorporated into technologies, we can minimize negative consequences of a growing nanotechnology and promote sustainability. Because nanoparticles are key building blocks for applications in chemical/biological sensing, nanoelectronics, quantum computing, and nanophotonics they are likely to be widely distributed throughout the environment. By using a library of structurally and compositionally well-defined nanoparticles in conjunction with biological assays that examine multiple aspects of cellular and organismal health, it will be possible to identify those that cause harm and develop structure-property relationships to feed back into product design.
Thrust Group Leader: Dr. Robert Tanguay (OSU)
Expanded libraries of precisely engineered nanoparticles
This research group is exploring new methods of synthesis and purification to access nanoparticles with new structural or chemical features. We are developing a library of well-defined reference nanomaterials needed for biological investigation, wherein these materials possess precisely controlled size, shape, composition, surface function and purity.
Probe the biological impacts of functionalized nanoparticles
Biological assays have been established to link the physical, chemical, and geometric properties of structurally and chemically well-defined nanoparticles to their function in biological systems. The biological assays give information on nanoparticle movement and tissue accumulation, changes in gene expression in response to nanoparticle interaction with the cellular environment, and subsequent alterations to organismal viability and development. Individual nanoparticles are tracked in real time through live cells to examine the fate of nanoparticles in cultured. The data from these tracking studies will augment the ongoing in vivo and in vitro toxicity screenings and will be fed back into nanoparticle design to create nanoparticles that have minimal impact on organisms.
Computational and analytic tools to support the development of environmentally-benign nanomaterials
There is a paucity of data on nanoparticle characterization and toxicity or a means for disseminating new data. Many government agencies have called for a method to catalog the anticipated accumulation of data on nanoparticles into a relatively easy searchable database. This research group focuses on the development of a collaborative knowledgebase of Nanomaterial-Biological Interactions (NBI) that is systematically linked to related data/knowledgebases. NBI will serve as a repository for annotated data on nanomaterial-biological interactions. Relevant computational, analytic and data mining tools will be integrated and/or developed to extract useful knowledge from diverse datasets on nanomaterial characterization, synthesis methods and nanomaterial-biological interactions defined at multiple levels of biological organizations.
Projects completed under this Thrust
Modify the surface functionalization of nanoparticles. Dr. Mingdi Yan, PSU
The goal of this task was to develop methods of introducing surface functionality to interface nanoparticles with other materials while maintaining a reduced toxicity. Functional nanomaterials must be capable of interfacing with a wide array of other materials. The use of ligand exchange reactions to introduce surface functional groups was extended by introducing new ligands that could be easily conjugated to a wide range of materials after the exchange. This method allowed conjugation to nearly any carbon-based material regardless of chemical funcationliaty.
The use of lipids as benign ligands for nanoparticle synthesis. Dr. Scott Reed, UC-Denver
In this task, we focused on: (1) use of lipids as benign ligands for nanoparticle synthesis; (2) control of nanoparticle shape using lipids; and (3) minimization of toxic reducing agents (e.g. formaldehyde) in the synthesis of nanomaterials.
We developed techniques to prepare gold and silver nanoparticles using lipids as capping ligands. We have published our results using gold nanoparticles and phosphatidylcholine (PC) lipid (Mackiewicz et al, 2008). Many nanoparticle properties can be tuned using this approach including metal core size and solubility. In particular, an unprecendented solubility conversion was observed that allows for new methods for preparing and modifying functional nanostructures in benign solvents.
We have successfully expanded our lecithin-based green synthetic routes to include the synthesis of silver nanoparticles, gold prisms, and silver-gold core-shell nanomaterials.
We found that formaldehyde reacts with ammonium hydroxide (in the original recipe) to form a polymer that changeshow silver attaches to and coates a substrate. In the case of a gold nanoparticle substrate, this polymer is responsible for creating a nonconcentric core-shell nanoparticle with near-infrared plasmon resonance at 700 nm. Concentric nanoparticles with a plasmon resonance between silver and gold (498 nm) are formed under condtions that do not favor formation of this polymer. This understanding allowed us to decrease formaldehyde contration 100-fold. (Norris, et al. 2010).
Probing the biological impacts of functionalized nanoparticles. Karen Guillemin, James Hutchison, Eric Johnson and John Postlethwait (UO)
We have examined the biological impact of nanoparticles on cultured Drosophila KC cells and created a database of gene expression changes caused by exposure to nanoparticles varying in charge and size. We also developed flow cytometry assays for cell metabolism and death that have allowed precise quantitation of nanoparticle effects, created a dsRNA 'knowckout' library of regulator genes in Drosophila and created luciferase reporters and have shown that they are activated by nanoparticle exposure.
Research to Innovation Enterprise spun from seed funding (E. Johnson): Floragenex
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