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Highly Fluorescent Chiral N-S-Doped Carbon Dots from Cysteine: Affecting Cellular Energy Metabolism.

Feng LiYiye LiXiao YangXuexiang HanYang JiaoTaotao WeiDayong YangHuaping XuGuangjun Nie
Published in: Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) (2018)
Cysteine-based chiral optically active carbon dots (CDs) and their effects on cellular energy metabolism, which is vital for essential cellular functions, have been barely reported. A green and effective synthesis strategy for chiral N-S-doped CDs (fluorescence quantum yield ca. 41.26 %) based on hydrothermal treatment of l- or d-cysteine at as low as 60 °C has been developed. This suggested that cysteine was instable in aqueous solutions and acts as a warning for high-temperature synthesis of nanomaterials using cysteine as stabilizer. Human bladder cancer T24 cells treated with l-CDs showed up-regulated glycolysis, while d-CDs had no similar effects. In contrast, no disturbance to the basal mitochondrial aerobic respiration of T24 cells was caused by either chiral CD.
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