Quantum dots based imprinting fluorescent nanosensor for the selective and sensitive detection of phycocyanin: A general imprinting strategy toward proteins

5 years ago

Quantum dots based imprinting fluorescent nanosensor for the selective and sensitive detection of phycocyanin: A general imprinting strategy toward proteins

Molecular imprinting as a versatile technology has gained popularity in various fields for diverse species; however, protein imprinting still remains challenging due to some inherent problems but is potentially rewarding work. Herein, we reported a facile strategy to imprint phycocyanin (PC), as a template, using quantum dots (QDs) co-capped by thioglycollic acid and glutathione directly as functional monomer via dopamine self-polymerization, which effectively simplified the imprinting process and afforded easy accessibility to recognition sites. The resulting QDs based imprinting nanosensor showed significant fluorescence decrease of QDs within less than 16s upon binding PC owing to the ultrathin imprinting layer (ca. 3nm), leading to a high detectability down to 0.075μM. An excellent linearity was found within the wide range of 0.8–8.0μM (R ² =0.9935). Good recognition selectivity toward PC was displayed over other possible competing molecules, with a high imprinting factor of 7.3. Seawater and lake water samples spiked with PC were also analyzed, presenting satisfactory recoveries ranging from 90.8–110.1% with precisions below 4.6%, indicating the practicality of the imprinting nanosensor for accurately rapid nanoscale monitoring of algae blooms. By using another protein, bovine haemoglobin (BHb), as a convincing support model, the present study can provide a simple and general imprinting strategy toward various concerned proteins through rationally utilizing diverse functionalization and interactions.

Publisher URL: www.sciencedirect.com/science

DOI: S0925400517314909