The light-oxygen effect in biological cells enhanced by highly localized surface plasmon-polaritons

Abstract

Here at the first time we suggested that the surface plasmon-polariton phenomenon which it is well described in metallic nanostructures could also be used for explanation of the unexpectedly strong oxidative effects of the low-intensity laser irradiation in living matters (cells, tissues, organism). We demonstrated that the narrow-band laser emitting at 1265 nm could generate significant amount of the reactive oxygen species (ROS) in both HCT116 and CHO-K1 cell cultures. Such cellular ROS effects could be explained through the generation of highly localized plasmon-polaritons on the surface of mitochondrial crista. Our experimental conditions, the low-intensity irradiation, the narrow spectrum band (<4 nm) of the laser and comparably small size bio-structures (~10 μm) were shown to be sufficient for the plasmon-polariton generation and strong laser field confinement enabling the oxidative stress observed.