Total RNA was extracted using the TRIzol reagent (Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA, USA) and cDNAs were synthesized using the iScript cDNA Synthesis kit according to the manufacturer's instructions (Bio-Rad, Hercules, CA, USA).
Three different synthesis techniques were adopted in this study: ▪ The CeO2 nanofibers were synthesized by means of the precipitation/ripening method[9, 15]: starting from a 1 M aqueous solution of cerium (III) nitrate hexahydrate precursor (Sigma-Aldrich, St . Louis MO, USA, 99%), the fibers were synthesized using a rotary evaporator and varying the NaOH/citric acid molar ratio.
The peptides (Tables 1 and 2) were synthesized using NeoMPS (San Diego, CA, USA).
Magnetization data was obtained with a MPMS SQUID-VSM instrument by Quantum Design (San Diego, USA) at 300 K. Oleylamine-coated USPIOs were synthesized using a slight variation of the method of Hou, Gao and Sun.
Peptides were synthesized using an automated peptide synthesizer (MBS 396; Advanced Chemtech, Louisville, USA) using fluorenylmethoxycarbonyl chemistry.
First-strand cDNAs were synthesized using MML-V reverse transcriptase (Promega, Madison, USA).
cDNAs were synthesized using RevertAidTM Reverse Transcriptase (Fermentas, Glen Burnie, MD, USA).
First strand cDNAs were synthesized using the First Strand cDNA Synthesis kit (Fermentas, USA).
cDNAs were synthesized using a High-Capacity cDNA Reverse Transcription Kit (Applied Biosystems, USA).
Messenger RNA of desired stages or tissues were extracted using an RNeasy mini kit (Qiagen Inc., USA); cDNA was synthesized using the ExScript RT reagent Kit (Takara Bio Inc., Japan) with oligo-dT primer or random 9-mer primers.
