Spying on chameleon nanoparticles inside living cells

If you are exposed to nanoparticles, you might think they would move around inside your body unchanged. However, it would be more accurate to think of them as tiny chameleons, constantly changing their properties as they move from one biological environment to another. Nanoparticles’ large surface area-to-mass ratio, which causes them to be highly reactive, …

Surfing Particles: taking a ride using living cell machinery

Some cells in our body have elongated structures or microvilli at their surface. These microvilli have many functions that help the cell to survive, and some features that make them act like train tracks that shuttle substances along them. We recently captured a movie of nanoparticles hitching a ride on these cellular train tracks. Nanoparticles …