J Phys Chem C 2011, 115:17973–17978.CrossRef 29. Martin CA, Ding D, van der Zant HSJ, van Ruitenbeek JM: Lithographic mechanical break junctions for single-molecule measurements click here in vacuum: possibilities and limitations. New J Phys 2008, 10:065008.CrossRef 30. Rubio-Bollinger G, Bahn SR, Agrait N, Jacobsen KW, Vieira S: Mechanical properties and formation mechanisms of a wire of single

gold atoms. Phys Rev Lett 2001, 87:026101.CrossRef 31. Martin CA, Ding D, Sørensen JK, Bjørnholm T, van Ruitenbeek JM, van der Zant HSJ: Fullerene-based anchoring groups for molecular electronics. J Am Chem Soc 2008, 130:13198–13199.CrossRef Competing interests All the authors declare no competing interests. Authors’ contributions The experiments, including the analysis of data, were conceived and performed by CA and RF. HvdZ also conceived and co-wrote the paper. The synthesis

of the molecules was done by KM and TB, and the calculations were performed by JS. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.”
“Background Carbon nanotubes are allotropes of carbon with a cylindrical nanostructure and categorized as single-walled (SWCNTs) and multi-walled nanotubes. By virtue of their unique properties, SWCNTs have been demonstrated as promising nanomaterials for a wide range of applications. In particular, increasing attention has been directed to their utilization in biomedicine, such as in biosensors, drug delivery, and biomarkers [1, 2]. However, attention has also been directed toward human Thiamine-diphosphate kinase health effects that selleck chemicals exposure to these materials may produce. Thus, nanotoxicology has become an

important research topic in nanoscience. In the past decade, various groups have independently reported toxicological studies on SWCNTs, both in vitro and in vivo. These results have mainly focused on pulmonary toxicity, cytotoxic effects, inflammatory response, and genotoxicity [3–9]. However, the studies on SWCNTs leading to hepatotoxicity in animals have been limited in scope [10, 11], and they only assessed the effects of SWCNTs on reactive oxygen species induction and various hepatotoxicity markers (alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alkaline phosphatase (ALP), LPO, and liver morphology) in the mouse model. Recent studies have shown that metabonomic methods are useful in the assessment of toxic mechanisms and prediction of toxicity [12, 13]. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is one of the major techniques used in metabonomic studies as these spectra can contain a wealth of metabolic information. The signals from thousands of individual metabolites can be observed simultaneously and can YM155 order partially overlap [14]. Processing these complex data can be simplified by multivariate statistical analysis, including data reduction and pattern recognition techniques, such as principal components analysis (PCA) and partial least squares discriminant analysis [15].