Akbar Hasanzadeh, Fatemeh Radmanesh, Elaheh Sadat Hosseini, Iman Hashemzadeh, Jafar Kiani, Helena Nourizadeh, Marzieh Naseri, Yousef Fatahi, Fateme Chegini, Zahra Madjd, Ali Beyzavi, Piotr S Kowalski, Mahdi Karimi
Safe and efficient delivery of CRISPR/Cas9 systems is still a challenge. Here we report the development of fluorescent nitrogen- and zinc-doped carbon dots (N-Zn-doped CDs) using one-step microwave-aided pyrolysis based on citric acid, branched PEI25k , and different zinc salts. These versatile nanovectors with a quantum yield of around 60% could not only transfect large CRISPR plasmids (∼9 kb) with higher efficiency (80%) compared to PEI25k and lipofectamine 2000 (Lipo 2K), but they also delivered mRNA into HEK 293T cells with the efficiency 20 times greater than and equal to that of PEI25k and Lipo 2K, respectively...
July 19, 2021: Bioconjugate Chemistry