International Journal of Nanomedicine (May 2017)
ATP synthesis in the energy metabolism pathway: a new perspective for manipulating CdSe quantum dots biosynthesized in Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Abstract
Rong Zhang,1–3 Ming Shao,1–3 Xu Han,1–3 Chuan Wang,3–4 Yong Li,3–4 Bin Hu,3–4 Daiwen Pang,3–4 Zhixiong Xie1–31Hubei Key Laboratory of Cell Homeostasis, 2College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University, 3Key Laboratory of Analytical Chemistry for Biology and Medicine (Ministry of Education), 4College of Chemistry and Molecular Science, Wuhan University, Wuhan, People’s Republic of ChinaAbstract: Due to a growing trend in their biomedical application, biosynthesized nanomaterials are of great interest to researchers nowadays with their biocompatible, low-energy consumption, economic, and tunable characteristics. It is important to understand the mechanism of biosynthesis in order to achieve more efficient applications. Since there are only rare studies on the influences of cellular energy levels on biosynthesis, the influence of energy is often overlooked. Through determination of the intracellular ATP concentrations during the biosynthesis process, significant changes were observed. In addition, ATP synthesis deficiency caused great decreases in quantum dots (QDs) biosynthesis in the Δatp1, Δatp2, Δatp14, and Δatp17 strains. With inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometry and atomic absorption spectroscopy analyses, it was found that ATP affected the accumulation of the seleno-precursor and helped with the uptake of Cd and the formation of QDs. We successfully enhanced the fluorescence intensity 1.5 or 2 times through genetic modification to increase ATP or SeAM (the seleno analog of S-adenosylmethionine, the product that would accumulate when ATP is accrued). This work explains the mechanism for the correlation of the cellular energy level and QDs biosynthesis in living cells, demonstrates control of the biosynthesis using this mechanism, and thus provides a new manipulation strategy for the biosynthesis of other nanomaterials to widen their applications. Keywords: ATP, biosynthesis, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, QDs, CdSe
