title: Breaking of the phosphodiester bond: a key factor that induces hemolysis.
abstract: In-depth understanding the toxicity of nanomaterials in red blood cells (RBCs) is of great interest, because of the importance of RBCs in transporting oxygen in blood circulation. Although the toxic effects of nanoparticles in RBCs have been revealed, the conclusions from the literature are conflicting, and in particular, the toxic mechanism is still at the infant stage. Herein, we investigated the size-dependent toxicity of well-known CdTe semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) and revealed the exact toxic mechanism at the molecular level by confocal microscopy and Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy techniques. We found that smaller mercaptosuccinic acid-capped CdTe QDs (MSA-QDs) with the green-emitting color could cause hemagglutination whereas the middle-size yellow-emitting MSA-QDs induced the formation of stomatocytes and echinocytes and the bigger size red-emitting MSA-QDs induced heavy hemolysis and the formation of lots of ghost cells. The FT-IR data proved that all the MSA-QDs were likely to bond to the RBCs membranes and caused the structural changes of lipid and protein in RBCs. But only the red-emitting MSA-QDs caused the breakage of the phosphodiester bond, which might cause the heavy hemolysis. To some extent, this is the first example that reveals the hemolysis mechanism at the molecular level.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Electroanalytical Chemistry, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Changchun 130022, China.
authors.forename: Tiantian
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Xiue
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Jiang
mesh_terms: D019187:Cadmium Compounds / Q000633:toxicity; D002462:Cell Membrane / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000187:drug effects; D002470:Cell Survival; D004912:Erythrocytes / Q000737:chemistry / Q000166:cytology / Q000187:drug effects*; D006461:Hemolysis / Q000187:drug effects*; D006801:Humans; D008055:Lipids / Q000737:chemistry; D011506:Proteins / Q000737:chemistry; D045663:Quantum Dots / Q000633:toxicity*; D013691:Tellurium / Q000633:toxicity
chemical_list: D019187:Cadmium Compounds; D008055:Lipids; D011506:Proteins; D013691:Tellurium
keywords: FT-IR spectroscopy; confocal microscopy; cytotoxicity; hemolysis mechanism; red blood cells; semiconductor quantum dots