Ever since the discovery of fullerenes in 1985, nanocarbon has demonstrated a wide range of applications in various areas of science and engineering. Compared with metal, oxide, and semiconductor nanoparticles, the carbon-based nanomaterials have distinct advantages in both biotechnological and biomedical applications due to their inherent biocompatibility. Fluorescent nanodiamond (FND) joined the nanocarbon family in 2005. It was initially developed as a contrast agent for bioimaging because it can emit bright red photoluminescence from negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy centers built in the diamond matrix. A notable application of this technology is to study the cytoplasmic dynamics of living cells by tracking single bioconjugated FNDs in intracellular medium. This article provides a critical review on recent advances and developments of such single particle tracking (SPT) research. It summarizes SPT and related studies of FNDs in cells (such as cancer cell lines) and organisms (including zebrafish embryos, fruit fly embryos, whole nematodes, and mice) using assorted imaging techniques.

自从1985年发现富勒烯以来，纳米碳已在科学和工程学的各个领域展示了广泛的应用。与金属，氧化物和半导体纳米颗粒相比，碳基纳米材料由于其固有的生物相容性，在生物技术和生物医学应用中均具有明显的优势。荧光纳米金刚石（FND）于2005年加入了纳米碳家族。它最初是作为生物成像的造影剂而开发的，因为它可以从钻石基质中带负电荷的氮空位中心发出亮红色的光致发光。该技术的显着应用是通过跟踪细胞内培养基中的单个生物结合的FND，研究活细胞的细胞质动力学。本文对此类单粒子跟踪（SPT）研究的最新进展提供了重要的评论。它总结了使用各种成像技术对细胞（例如癌细胞系）和生物体（包括斑马鱼胚胎，果蝇胚胎，整个线虫和小鼠）中的FND进行SPT和相关研究。