Abstract
Iron oxide nanoparticles (IONPs) have biomedical and biotechnological applications in magnetic imaging, drug-delivery, magnetic separation and purification. The biocompatibility of such particles may be improved by covering them with coating. In presented paper the biochemical anomalies of liver and kidney occurring in animals exposed to d-mannitol-coated iron(III) oxide nanoparticles (M-IONPs) were examined with Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) microspectroscopy. The dose of IONPs used in the study was significantly lower than those used so far in other research. Liver and kidney tissue sections were analysed by chemical mapping of infrared absorption bands originating from proteins, lipids, compounds containing phosphate groups, cholesterol and cholesterol esters. Changes in content and/or structure of the selected biomolecules were evaluated by comparison of the results obtained for animals treated with M-IONPs with those from control group. Biochemical analysis of liver samples demonstrated a few M-IONPs induced anomalies in the organ, mostly concerning the relative content of the selected compounds. The biomolecular changes, following exposition to nanoparticles, were much more intense within the kidney tissue. Biochemical aberrations found in the organ samples indicated at increase of tissue density, anomalies in fatty acids structure as well as changes in relative content of lipids and proteins. The simultaneous accumulation of lipids, phosphate groups as well as cholesterol and cholesterol esters in kidneys of rats exposed to IONPs may indicate that the particles stimulated formation of lipid droplets within the organ.
Highlights
Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) microspectroscopy, being a type of vibrational spectroscopy, is a physico-chemical analytical technique that allows identifying a biomolecules-characteristic functional groups on the basis of their IR absorption [1,2]
The measurements were done in transflection mode using FTIR imaging system consisting of Agilent Cary 620 FTIR microscope equipped with a liquid nitrogen cooled 128 × 128 Focal Plane Array (FPA) MCT detector, associated with a Cary 670 spectrometer equipped with a globar IR source and a KBr beamsplitter
Our results suggest that FTIR microspectroscopy may enable detection of the prolonged changes in composition and/or conformation of the main biomolecules within liver and kidney of animals exposed to the low dose of M-Iron oxide nanoparticles (IONPs)
Summary
Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) microspectroscopy, being a type of vibrational spectroscopy, is a physico-chemical analytical technique that allows identifying a biomolecules-characteristic functional groups on the basis of their IR absorption [1,2]. FTIR microspectroscopy is sensitive to the conformation of the biomolecules, which is a rare property among spectroscopic methods [1,3,4] These features make FTIR imaging a powerful tool in the biochemical analysis of biological samples [2,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13]. Nanomaterials (NMs) have been widely investigated as a potential tools in biomedical applications including medical diagnostics, therapy and tissue engineering [14,15] They are most commonly defined as objects with one or more external dimensions size range 1–100 nm [16]. Among different NMs used in biomedical research nanoparticles (NPs), defined as the objects with two or three dimensions between 1 and 100 nm, are the most intensively investigated [20,21,22,23]
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