C 2014 American Chemical Society Mapping Photothermally Induced Gene Expression in Living Cells and Tissues by Nanorod-Locked Nucleic Acid Complexes

he advent of plasmonic nanostruc-tures has opened new opportunities in fundamental biology and transla-tional medicine.111 Photothermal therapy of cancer and other diseases, for instance, is based on plasmonic nanoparticle-enhanced laser absorption to treat the target cells or tissues.4 With the leaky vasculature of tumor tissues or by specific surface functionaliza-tion, plasmonic nanoparticles can preferen-tially accumulate in cancer cells.1214 The high concentration of nanoparticles in the cancer tissue enables photothermal opera-tion, such as localized heating and cell abla-tion, using near-infrared laser, which has a large penetration depth in tissue. Photother-mal therapy of cancer, for instance, utilizes the plasmonic effect of gold nanorods with near-infrared laser.4,15 Furthermore, plasmo-nic nanostructures coupled with small inter-fering RNA (siRNA) have been applied to control photonic gene circuits.7,16 The siRNA nanostructure technique allows optically addressable release of siRNA and provides an effective approach for precise perturba-tion of gene circuits without permanent genomic medications. A photothermal nano-bladehas alsobeendeveloped for large cargo delivery in living cells.17 The technique utilizes a glassmicrocapillary pipetwith a thinmetal * Address correspondence t