Surface modified gold nanowires for mammalian cell transfection

Aminothiol modified gold nanowires have been used as vectors for the delivery of plasmid DNA into two different types of mammalian cells: 3T3 and HeLa. It was measured that positively charged gold nanowires with a diameter of 200 nm and a length around 5 µm were capable of carrying 1 pg of plasmid DNA per nanowire into cells. Compared with other transfection reagents, the gold nanowires exhibited the highest transfection efficiency while almost no cytotoxicity was observed. In addition, it has been shown that individual nanowires can be visualized with sub-micrometer resolution, which may allow the use of functionalized multi-segment nanowires as local probes for the investigation of the microenvironment inside cells.