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Super-strong and Intrinsically Fluorescent Silkworm Silk from Carbon Nanodots Feeding.

ABSTRACT: Fluorescent silk is fundamentally important for the development of future tissue engineering scaffolds. Despite great progress in the preparation of a variety of colored silks, fluorescent silk with enhanced mechanical properties has yet to be explored. In this study, we report on the fabrication of intrinsically super-strong fluorescent silk by feeding Bombyx mori silkworm carbon nanodots (CNDs). The CNDs were incorporated into silk fibroin, hindering the conformation transformation, confining crystallization, and inducing orientation of mesophase. The resultant silk exhibited super-strong mechanical properties with breaking strength of 521.9 ± 82.7 MPa and breaking elongation of 19.2 ± 4.3%, improvements of 55.1% and 53.6%, respectively, in comparison with regular silk. The CNDs-reinforced silk displayed intrinsic blue fluorescence when exposed to 405 nm laser and exhibited no cytotoxic effect on cells, suggesting that multi-functional silks would be potentially useful in bioimaging and other applications.

SUBMITTER: Fan S

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7770652 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:The evolving threat of antibiotic resistance development in pathogenic bacteria necessitates the continued cultivation of new technologies and agents to mitigate associated negative health impacts globally. It is no surprise that infection prevention and control are cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as two routes for combating this dangerous trend. One technology that has gained great research interest is antimicrobial photodynamic inactivation of bacteria, or APDI. This technique permits controllable activation of antimicrobial effects by combining specific light excitation with the photodynamic properties of a photosensitizer; when activated, the photosensitizer generates reactive oxygen species (ROS) from molecular oxygen via either a type I (electron transfer) or type II (energy transfer) pathway. These species subsequently inflict oxidative damage on nearby bacteria, resulting in suppressed growth and cell death. To date, small molecule photosensitizers have been developed, yet the scalability of these as widespread sterilization agents is limited due to complex and costly synthetic procedures. Herein we report the use of brominated carbon nanodots (BrCND) as new photosensitizers for APDI. These combustion byproducts are easily and inexpensively collected; incorporation of bromine into the nanodot permits photosensitization effects that are not inherent to the carbon nanodot structure alone-a consequence of triplet character gained by the heavy atom effect. BrCND demonstrate both type I and type II photosensitization under UV-A irradiation, and furthermore are shown to have significant antimicrobial effects against both Gram-negative Escherichia coli and Gram-positive Staphylococcus aureus and Listeria monocytogenes as well. A mechanism of "dark" toxicity is additionally reported; the pH-triggered release of reactive nitrogen species is detected from a carbon nanodot structure for the first time. The results described present the BrCND structure as a competitive new antimicrobial agent for controllable sterilization of bacteria.

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Super-strong and Intrinsically Fluorescent Silkworm Silk from Carbon Nanodots Feeding.

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