Fluorine-Doped Cationic Carbon Dots for Efficient Gene Delivery

Carbon dots (CDs) focus great attention in a broad range of adhibitions because of their excellent optical properties and high biocompatibility and property adjustability. However, the developed CDs have rarely been used as effective gene vectors until now. In this work, we devised and synthesized novel fluorine-doped cationic CDs (FCDs) using tetrafluoroterephthalic acid as a fluorine source and using branched polyethylenimine to furnish positive charge sites. The FCDs achieve dramatic positive EGFP and luciferase gene transfection efficiency as well as low cytotoxicity in commonly used cell lines at a low weight ratio, even in primary and stem cells. It is worth pointing out that the FCDs possess superior efficiency and biocompatibility, compared to some widely used commercial reagents such as 25 kDa polyethylenimine and Lipofectamine 2000. In addition, the FCDs show excellent efficient transfection even at high serum concentration and low DNA dose, indicating potential practical applications.