Decoration of Autophagy Detecting Nanoparticle with an Anionic Fluorochrome Enhances Multispectral Characterization of Autophagosome Location and Flux.

Autophagy is a key biological process that has proven extremely difficult to detect noninvasively. To address this, an autophagy detecting nanoparticle (ADN) was recently developed, consisting of an iron oxide nanoparticle decorated with cathepsin-cleavable arginine-rich peptides bound to the near-infrared fluorochrome Cy5.5.