Abstract
Biological applications of nanomaterials as delivery carriers have been embedded in traditional biomedical research for decades. Despite lagging behind, recent significant breakthroughs in the use of nanocarriers as tools for plant biotechnology have created great interest. In this Perspective, we review the outstanding recent works in nanocarrier-mediated plant transformation and its agricultural applications. We analyze the chemical and physical properties of nanocarriers determining their uptake efficiency and transport throughout the plant body.
Highlights
Applications of nanotechnologies have pervaded almost every aspect of scientific research
We focus on current progress and gaps in developing nanoscale carrier applications for plants, consider the challenges and potential solutions, and conclude by exploring controlled cargo release for plant nanocarriers
Due to the fundamental structural and intracellular differences between plant and animal cells, laboratory and industrial application of nanoscale carriers’ entry and transport in plants requires careful testing and monitoring. This need applies especially to whether in vivo sitespecific targeting, delivery, and/or release would function as intended in real crop plants under environmental conditions, and, based on the current survey (Table 2), different vascular uptake patterns are likely to occur between monocot and eudicot plants
Summary
The most obvious difference between animal and plant cells is the presence of the plant cell wall (Figure 2) that creates the most conspicuous challenge to nanocarrier delivery into plant cells. Other than a few cases of size-selection for gold nanoparticles (AuNPs),[43] nanocarriers up to 100 nm in diameter were reported as being transported through cell walls (Table 2). The various shapes of nanoparticles seem to have little effect on their transport efficiencies across cell walls, and we can find no published studies that have demonstrated uptake mechanisms beyond direct penetration by DNA nanostructures and carbon nanotubes.[9,11]. It seems that limitations for cell wall transport more likely arise from general physicochemical characteristics of the nanoparticles.
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