Smart Nanotubes:A Novel Alternative for Gene Delivery

Gene delivery, the process of introducing foreign genes into living cells, is an important technique in fields such as metabolic engineering and gene therapy. Including chemical/biological approaches (either using lipids, cationic polymers, or virus as vectors, or using conjugation) and physical approaches (heat shock, electroporation, gene gun, microinjection, and sonoporation), have been applied in bacterial, mammalian, and plant cells. However, these approaches are successful only in a few bacterial species because of the low efficiency of transformation, the complicated operation protocols, the severe damage to cells, and the high cost of complex devices. Carbon nanotubes were used to attain more than 15,000 transformants in the same situation. Therefore, the transformation method could be extended to other nanomaterials. Meanwhile, compared with the mechanism previously reported, we verified quite a different principle for the mechanism responsible for such a transformation. In sum, this unique transformation can be developed to become the third widely-used transformation method in laboratories.