It is of great significance to study the mechanism of virus infection for the prevention and early diagnosis and treatment of viral diseases.The process of virus infection into host cells is quite complex, often involving multiple steps, and involves complex interactions between viruses and various cellular structures.Therefore, there is an urgent need for a technology to study virus infection in host cells in real time and in situ, and single particle tracing technology is a powerful tool to study the dynamic process of biological events, which can well meet the needs of virus infection mechanism research. Fluorescent labeling of virus components is the first requirement for single particle tracer. However, many traditional fluorescent markers with low brightness (large amount required, affecting the structure of the virus) and poor photostability (free radicals generated by photobleaching interfere with normal biological processes) cannot meet the requirements of single particle tracer for a long time, and often require a lot of time and energy to obtain data for statistical analysis. Quantum dots have excellent fluorescence properties such as high brightness, good light stability and so on. As a marker, quantum dots are very suitable for single particle tracer with high signal-to-noise ratio in living cells for a long time, which has attracted extensive attention of researchers in the field of biology. By virtue of high fluorescence intensity and good light stability of quantum dots, our research group established a set of two-dimensional and three-dimensional single virus tracer methods based on quantum dots, which realized real-time, in-situ and dynamic tracer of virus infection in living cells.By monitoring virus infection behavior in a long time, dynamically and visually, and using image processing technology to locate virus spot with high precision, track reconstruction and track analysis, the dynamic mechanism of avian influenza virus infection process has been deeply studied, and a series of research results have been obtained.【Chem. Rev., 120(3)(2020)1936-1979; ACS Nano, 11(2017)4395-4406；Chem. Soc. Rev., 45(2016)1211-1224；ACS Nano, 10(1)(2016)1147-1155; ACS Nano, 12(2018)474-484；ACS Nano, 6(2012)141-150 】

FIG. The dynamic mechanism of avian influenza virus infection was systematically studied by using single virus tracer technique of quantum dots.

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