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Updated: May 3, 2026

Synthesis of Near-Infrared Emitting Gold Nanoclusters for Biological Applications
Published on: March 22, 2020
Purine-stabilized green fluorescent gold nanoclusters for cell nuclei imaging applications
V Venkatesh1, Akansha Shukla, Sri Sivakumar
1Department of Chemistry, ‡Department of Chemical Engineering, Material Science Programme, and §DST Thematic Unit of Excellence on Soft Nanofabrication, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur , Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh 208016, India.
Abstract:
We report facile one-pot synthesis of water-soluble green fluorescent gold nanoclusters (AuNCs), capped with 8-mercapto-9-propyladenine. The synthesized AuNCs were characterized by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), (1)H NMR, and matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF) mass spectrometry. These nanoclusters show high photostability and biocompatibility. We observed that AuNCs stain cell nuclei with high specificity, where the mechanism of AuNC uptake was established through pathway-specific uptake inhibitors. These studies revealed that cell internalization of AuNCs occurs via a macropinocytosis pathway.
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