Guanine Vesicle Hybrid Particles for Bio-Reflector-Based Bio-Imaging

The ability to visualize biological processes in real time rather than observing them at discrete points of time holds huge applicability in understanding the incredible processes of how the human body behaves during disease progression and healing. The prospects of live cell imaging include observing changes during cell differentiation, signaling, and molecular analysis of cell cycle including targeted drug delivery. Studying cells in real time assist in recording invaluable data whose knowledge holds great importance in understanding several aspects of cell functions at both microscopic and macroscopic levels. Cell labeling using photonic crystals for live cell imaging has never been tried before. Guanine crystals (GCs) are optical nanoparticles having fulgent light reflective properties that respond rapidly and align parallel to an applied magnetic field. Our target was to fabricate a brilliant “hybrid vesicle” using guanine inside lipid vesicles. Under dark field microscopy, GC shone brilliantly, causing strong illumination of the lipid vesicles with increased motion of vesicles under magnetic exposure. We think that “hybrid vesicle” could possibly be used for real-time cell tracking in live cell bio-imaging.