Carbon nanotube-mediated DNA delivery in intact plants (Nature Protocols)

One promising use of nanomaterials is the delivery of biomolecules into cells. Demirer et al. report a detailed protocol for Carbon Nano Tube-mediated DNA delivery into intact plants, allowing transformation without transgene integration, that can be used in both model and crop species. In brief, carboxylated Single Wall Nano Tubes (SWNT) are modified with a cationic polymer; these positively charged nanotubes are incubated with negatively charged DNA plasmid vectors, then this conjugate is infiltrated into leaves. The authors describe the delivery of plasmids encoding GFP into Nicotiana, arugula, wheat, and cotton leaves. In comparison with Agrobacterium- and biolistics-based methods, SWNT-based DNA delivery can perform a highly efficient transient transformation in a high-throughput manner, without toxicity or tissue damage. A promising use of this technique is the delivery of plasmids coding for nuclease-based genome-editing proteins. (Summary by Humberto Herrera-Ubaldo) Nature Protocols 10.1038/s41596-019-0208-9