DEVELOPMENT OF DIAMOND INTRACELLULAR NANOPROBES FOR ONCOGEN TRANSFORMATION DYNAMICS MONITORING IN LIVING CELLS

Dynamic information about bio-molecular processes in living cells is important for fundamental understanding of cellular functions, which is one of the primary targets of molecular cell-biology with important applications to pharmacology. However fur further progress in this field, and this specifically for monitoring genomic processes, there is immense need for developing sensing and detection techniques that can operate with sufficient sub-microscopic resolution inside the living cells and bringing real-time information about local bio-molecular interactions. The present proposal makes a further, large step towards integration of forefront nanotechnology, chemistry and molecular biology expertise with a common goal of studying intracellular processes during the evolution steps of several types of frequently occurring cancers. This will create a novel tool studying the molecular processes in cells on nano-scale, which is the objective of this call. 

The aim of the DINAMO project is to develop the nano-diamond particle (NDP) non-invasive label-free nanotechnology platform for real-time monitoring (1) of living cells modified by oncogenic impact, (2) of the kinetics of gene-assisted processes in the cells. Based on the development work of DINAMO, we propose to apply to apply luminescent and single spin detection techniques for real-time dynamic monitoring of bio-molecular processes in cells.