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Carbon dots, a recent member of the renowned carbon-based nanomaterials family, have attracted significant interest from various fields. The extraordinary properties, including excellent photoluminescence, high biocompatibility, and tunable surface functionalities as well as the abundant and inexpensive nature, have led to remarkable bioapplications in bioimaging, drug delivery, and theranostics development. In this article, studies on the interaction of C-dots with biomacromolecules are reviewed first, and recent developments of C-dots for target-specific bioimaging, drug delivery as well as theranostics development are highlighted and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peptides and proteins have become very promising drug candidates in recent decades due to their unique properties. However, the application of these drugs has been limited by their high enzymatic susceptibility, low membrane permeability and poor bioavailability when administered orally. Considerable efforts have been made to design and develop drug delivery systems that could transport peptides and proteins to targeted area. Although it is of great importance to determine the composition after loading a drug to the carrier, the ability to do so is significantly limited by current analytical methods. In this letter, five important proteins, α 1 -antitrypsin, hemoglobin human, human serum albumin, human transferrin and r-globulin were chemically conjugated to two model drug carriers, namely carbon dots and polymer O-(2-carboxyethyl) polyethylene glycol. A simple yet convenient method based on circular dichroism spectroscopy was developed to determine the compositions of the various protein-carrier conjugates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]