Size-dependent toxicity of nano-C60 aggregates: more sensitive indication by apoptosis-related Bax translocation in cultured human cells.

The toxicity of NPs is not well characterized in terms of their size. In particular, the size-based toxicity of fullerene (C(60)) remains an issue because of a lack of C(60) NPs with a well-controlled size. In this work, six fractions of the nano-C(60) aggregates (nC(60)) with different size distribution were prepared by a simple differential centrifugation. By using these nC(60) fractions, we demonstrate the size-dependent inhibition of DNA polymerase and reduced-size enhanced cytotoxicity. Above all, we found that nC(60) NPs with smaller size may have higher toxicity potency. These size-dependent effects were observed at the high exposure doses (4-6 mg/L). Interestingly, at 20-times lower and noncytotoxic doses, the size-dependent effect can be indicated by apoptosis-related fluorescent protein fused Bax translocation. Considering the toxicity of NPs is often ignored in the traditional end-point analysis for cytotoxicity when the exposure dose is low, the findings presented here will assist in the evaluation of the size-dependent cytotoxicity and dose-response relationships of toxicity mediated by nC(60) NPs at low doses.