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Recent attention has been focused on nanomaterials due to their broad potential for biological and medical applications. Nanoparticles fabricated from metals or polymers have been used to enhance the quality of biomedical images by increasing contrast of specific targets. Moreover, nanomaterials have been combined with medicines in an effort to prolong their in vivo half-lives. Most research into medical applications of nanoparticles has involved injecting them into an animal. We have found that polystyrene, metal, and nC60 nanoparticles can undergo in vivo dispersion in C. elegans through oral administration. We found that orally administered nano-size
clusters pass through the pharynx and are taken up into the intestine. To explore the requirements for nanoparticle transport, we tested uptake of 50 and 100 nm particles in worms defective for genes involved in endocytosis and found that movement from the intestine to other sites was blocked in such mutants. Thus, inter-organ transport of nanoparticles from the intestine to the gonad and other tissues appears to involve endocytosis. High concentration of nanoparticles over a certain threshold point was shown to be extremely toxic in life-span of multi-cellular organisms resulting in defects in organs for digestion and reproduction. For the application of those particles as medicinal complex, we have developed a novel architecture using gold particles that provides delivery of RNAi in nematodes for gene silencing.