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Emulsion-oriented assembly for Janus double-spherical mesoporous nanoparticles as biological logic gates

Nature Chemistry volume 15, pages 832–840 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

The ability of Janus nanoparticles to establish biological logic systems has been widely exploited, yet conventional non/uni-porous Janus nanoparticles are unable to fully mimic biological communications. Here we demonstrate an emulsion-oriented assembly approach for the fabrication of highly uniform Janus double-spherical MSN&mPDA (MSN, mesoporous silica nanoparticle; mPDA, mesoporous polydopamine) nanoparticles. The delicate Janus nanoparticle possesses a spherical MSN with a diameter of ~150 nm and an mPDA hemisphere with a diameter of ~120 nm. In addition, the mesopore size in the MSN compartment is tunable from ~3 to ~25 nm, while those in the mPDA compartments range from ~5 to ~50 nm. Due to the different chemical properties and mesopore sizes in the two compartments, we achieve selective loading of guests in different compartments, and successfully establish single-particle-level biological logic gates. The dual-mesoporous structure enables consecutive valve-opening and matter-releasing reactions within one single nanoparticle, facilitating the design of single-particle-level logic systems.

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Fig. 1: Schematic of the synthesis process and biological logic gates of the Janus mesoporous nanoparticles MSN&mPDA.
Fig. 2: Emulsion-oriented assembly of the Janus mesoporous nanoparticles MSN&mPDA.
Fig. 3: Mechanism of the emulsion-oriented assembly process.
Fig. 4: Janus double-spherical MSN&mPDA nanoparticles with tunable large mesopores.
Fig. 5: Schematic of selective loading based on the size and surface property of the mesopores.
Fig. 6: Janus mesoporous double-spherical nanoparticles-based biological logic gates.

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Data availability

Data supporting the findings of this study are available within the Article and the associated Supplementary Information. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

We sincerely thank J. Ning and Z. He for their help with sample observations. The work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2018YFA0209401, D.Z.), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (22075049, X.L.; 21875043, X.L.; 22088101, D.Z.; 21701027, X.L.; 21733003, D.Z.; 51961145403, X.L.), the Key Basic Research Program of Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality (22JC1410200, D.Z.), the Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai (22ZR1478900, X.L.; 18ZR1404600, X.L.), the Shanghai Pilot Program for Basic Research-Fudan University (22TQ004, X.L.), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (20720220010, X.L.), the Shanghai Rising-Star Program (20QA1401200, X.L.; 22YF1402200, T.Z.) and NPRP grant NPRP12S-0309-190268 from the Qatar National Research Fund (X.L. and A.E.). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry and Laboratory of Advanced Materials, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Molecular Catalysis and Innovative Materials, State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers, Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials (2011-iChEM), College of Chemistry and Materials, Fudan University, Shanghai, P. R. China

    Tiancong Zhao, Liang Chen, Minchao Liu, Runfeng Lin, Chin-Te Hung, Shangfeng Wang, Linlin Duan, Fan Zhang, Xiaomin Li & Dongyuan Zhao

  2. Department of Musculoskeletal Tumor, Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center, Department of Oncology, Shanghai Medical College, Fudan University, Shanghai, P. R. China

    Weiluo Cai

  3. Materials Science and Technology Program, College of Arts and Sciences, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar

    Ahmed Elzatahry

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Contributions

D.Z., X.L. and T.Z. contributed to the conception and design of the experiments, analysis of the data and writing of the manuscript. L.C., M.L., R.L., W.C., C.H., S.W., L.D., A.E., F.Z. and X.L. assisted T.Z. in the synthesis of materials and data collection and analysis. All authors contributed to discussions and manuscript preparation.

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Correspondence to Xiaomin Li or Dongyuan Zhao.

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Nature Chemistry thanks Jian Liu, Ramon Martínez-Máñez and Hengquan Yang for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary methods, figs. 1–44 and references 1–7.

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Zhao, T., Chen, L., Liu, M. et al. Emulsion-oriented assembly for Janus double-spherical mesoporous nanoparticles as biological logic gates. Nat. Chem. 15, 832–840 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-023-01183-4

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