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The Apoptotic Effects of Silver- and Gold Nanoparticles on the Mouse Retina – an In Vivo Study

Bäckström, Filip (2016) MOBK01 20161
Degree Projects in Molecular Biology
Popular Abstract
Everyday products might make you blind!

I think we all can appreciate at least one of the following products: sun screen, scratch free frying pans, self-cleaning paint, makeup, food packing and odorless clothes. These are all everyday products were you can find tiny objects, called nanoparticles. Nanoparticles are defined as objects were one dimension is between 1-100 nm, that is, 1-100 billionth of a meter. It is hard to grasp how tiny these objects are; the relationship between a round 1 nm particle and a football is the same as the relationship between the football and our mother earth.

Why are these tiny particles so important? Nanoparticles can be engineered into all kinds of forms and from all kinds of materials. An important... (More)
Everyday products might make you blind!

I think we all can appreciate at least one of the following products: sun screen, scratch free frying pans, self-cleaning paint, makeup, food packing and odorless clothes. These are all everyday products were you can find tiny objects, called nanoparticles. Nanoparticles are defined as objects were one dimension is between 1-100 nm, that is, 1-100 billionth of a meter. It is hard to grasp how tiny these objects are; the relationship between a round 1 nm particle and a football is the same as the relationship between the football and our mother earth.

Why are these tiny particles so important? Nanoparticles can be engineered into all kinds of forms and from all kinds of materials. An important property of nanoparticles is, that compared to their bulk material, they are far more reactive. This is a chemical property that makes it possible to make odorless training clothes, because the silver nanoparticles in the textile is toxic for bacteria that otherwise would have caused the undesired sweat-odor.

Silver- and gold nanoparticles are two kinds of metal-based nanostructures that have been investigated extensively. Silver- nanoparticles mainly because it is used widely used in commercial products, for its antibacterial effects in, for example in wound dressing. Gold- nanoparticles because gold is less reactive and has proven to be a good candidate in research for treatment of cancer. It is also studied for drug-delivery, so that drugs can reach the sick part of the body.

We investigate the effects caused by gold- and silver nanoparticles on the retina. The retina is a part of the eye that transforms the information we receive in form of light, into a signal that our brain can interpret. Previous in vitro research has proven that silver- and gold nanoparticles can cause cells in the retina to die, something that can lead to blindness. Our research is based on this research and we here investigate the effects of these particles in vivo.

We injected these nanoparticles into the eyes of mice which were sacrificed after three days. The eyes were cut into sections and stained. A specific staining (i.e. TUNEL) makes it possible to detect cells that are dying through so-called programmed cell death (apoptosis) using a microscope. Our results however indicate that the effects of these tiny particles cause far less cells to die compared to in vitro. Although further research is needed, it would be good for us humans if this were to be established, because who knows, maybe nanoparticles can be used to cure cancer.

Supervisor: Ulrica Englund Johansson
Bachelor´s Degree Project 15 hp MOBK01 2016
Department of Biology, Lund Universtity
Dept. Ophtamology, Medical faculty, Lund University (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Bäckström, Filip
supervisor
organization
course
MOBK01 20161
year
type
M2 - Bachelor Degree
subject
language
English
id
8894250
date added to LUP
2016-10-28 11:38:24
date last changed
2016-10-28 11:38:24
@misc{8894250,
  author       = {{Bäckström, Filip}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{The Apoptotic Effects of Silver- and Gold Nanoparticles on the Mouse Retina – an In Vivo Study}},
  year         = {{2016}},
}