Fundamentals of Nanotoxicity: The Role of Nanoparticles in Lowering the Energy Barrier of Membrane Fusion

DOI

Despite the increasing use of nanoparticles (NPs), our current knowledge of how NPs interact with the human body or the environment remains limited. Of a number of mechanisms, a direct route via which NPs can mediate toxicity is to invade cells by crossing the cell membrane. Thus, understanding this NP-membrane-crossing process, and how it is affected by NPs¿ physical properties such as size, shape and surface chemistry, is central to our fundamental understanding of nanotoxicity. Previous clinical and biomedical studies have focused on phenomenological observations: i.e., NPs either invade cells or they don¿t; cells consequently either die or they don¿t. Studies, theoretical or experimental, addressing the fundamental mechanisms involved are very few. Here, the central fundamental question we would like to ask is: How would the presence of NPs modify the energetics of membrane fusion?

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.5286/ISIS.E.24089590
Metadata Access https://icatisis.esc.rl.ac.uk/oaipmh/request?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_datacite&identifier=oai:icatisis.esc.rl.ac.uk:inv/24089590
Provenance
Creator Professor Wuge Briscoe; Dr Charlotte Beddoes; Miss Agnieszka Cwalinska; Mr Christian Redeker; Dr Georgia Pilkington; Ms Kathrin Lange; Ms Julia Bartenstein; Ms Kathleen Cox; Ms Johanna Berge
Publisher ISIS Neutron and Muon Source
Publication Year 2016
Rights CC-BY Attribution 4.0 International; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
OpenAccess true
Contact isisdata(at)stfc.ac.uk
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Discipline Photon- and Neutron Geosciences
Temporal Coverage Begin 2012-10-25T08:03:51Z
Temporal Coverage End 2013-07-31T10:33:22Z