Abstract
Over the past 30 years, tremendous efforts have been made for the development of a safe, costeffective and efficient device for nucleic acid delivery to mammalian cells. The approach has great contribution to analysis of gene expression, function and regulation and production of numerous recombinant therapeutic proteins, as well as bright prospects for human gene therapy. Of the existing techniques either based on synthetic material (lipid, peptide, polymer, inorganic crystal) or natural one (virus), calcium phosphate (CaP) precipitation is the most simplified and the least expensive and thus widely used for basic research and largescale production of recombinant proteins. In addition, implementation of CaP precipitates in gene therapy purposes has recently been started. So this the right time to discuss the current progress in understanding the growth kinetics and physico-chemical properties of CaP precipitates, as well as the strategies undertaken so far to modulate the growth profiling which seriously affects the sizes of the precipitates - a crucial factor for effective delivery of DNA or RNA to the cells through endocytosis. Among the approaches in nano-apatite technology, magnesium-inspired nano-apatite formulation appears to have the tremendous potential for transfecting mammalian cells considering the flexibility and simplicity in regulating crystal growth kinetics at the molecular level and eventual remarkable efficiency for both delivery and expression of an exogenous gene.
Keywords: calcium phosphate, magnesium, nano-particles, crystal growth, delivery, dna, expression, sirna, gene silencing
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