Abstract
Fluorescent nanocrystals composed of semiconductor materials were first introduced for biological applications in the late 1990s. The focus of this review is to give a brief survey of biological applications of quantum dots (QDs) at the single QD sensitivity level. These are described as follows: 1) QD blinking and bleaching statistics, 2) the use of QDs in high speed single particle tracking with a special focus on how to design the biofunctional coatings of QDs which enable specific targeting to single proteins or lipids of interest, 3) a hybrid lipid-DNA analogue binding QDs which allows for tracking single lipids in lipid bilayers, 4) two-photon fluorescence correlation spectroscopy of QDs and 5) optical trapping and excitation of single QDs. In all of these applications, the focus is on the single particle sensitivity level of QDs. The high applicability of QDs in live cell imaging experiments held together with the prospects in localization microscopy and single molecule manipulation experiments gave QDs a promising future in single molecule research.
Highlights
Fluorescent nanocrystals composed of semiconductor materials are regularly referred to as quantum dots (QDs) because of their optical properties
In single particle tracking (SPT), single molecules of interests (MOIs) are sparsely labeled with a luminescent or scattering probe and the movement of the MOI:probe complexes is imaged by time-lapse microscopy at repetition rates ranging from a few to 50,000 Hz depending on the process investigated and the signal of the probe [48]
In this review we demonstrated the versatility of using individual quantum dots as markers for individual molecules and as force probes
Summary
Fluorescent nanocrystals composed of semiconductor materials are regularly referred to as quantum dots (QDs) because of their optical properties. Quantum confinement within the core material leads to the fluorescence emission wavelength being dependent on the core size and material composition. These days QDs are regularly being used in a variety of biological applications both in vitro and in vivo (References).
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