Laboratory of Chemical Biology, Division of Biological Inorganic Chemistry, State Key Laboratory of Rare Earth Resource Utilization and Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun 130022, China.
Analyst. 2012 Dec 7;137(23):5483-6. doi: 10.1039/c2an36174d. Epub 2012 Oct 10.
Carbon nanodots (C-Dots) have attracted growing interest in recent years due to their low cost, ready scalability, excellent chemical stability, biocompatibility, colloidal stability, and resilience of photoluminescence. They have been employed as novel, ideal fluorescent probes for bio-imaging and smart sensing. In addition, taking advantage of their low-cytotoxicity, C-Dots have potential applications in biochemical and cell biological fields. Herein, we present the first assay with aptamer-functionalized C-Dots as a sensory platform for protein detection. The presence of thrombin can induce the aptamer-modified fluorescent C-Dots to form a sandwich structure with aptamer-functionalized silica nanoparticles through specific protein/aptamer interaction. The assay shows high specificity toward thrombin. A detection limit of 1 nM is obtained, which is significantly improved as compared to that of many previously reported fluorescence-based thrombin detection assays. Using other modified aptamers and antibodies instead of thrombin binding aptamers, this strategy may offer a suitable approach for detection of other proteins in biological, pharmaceutical and nano-mechanical applications.
碳纳米点（C-Dots）由于其低成本、易于扩展、出色的化学稳定性、生物相容性、胶体稳定性和光致发光的弹性而在近年来引起了越来越多的关注。它们已被用作新型理想的荧光探针，用于生物成像和智能传感。此外，利用其低细胞毒性，C-Dots 在生物化学和细胞生物学领域具有潜在的应用。本文首次提出了基于适配体功能化 C-Dots 的测定方法，将其作为蛋白质检测的传感平台。凝血酶的存在可以诱导适配体修饰的荧光 C-Dots 通过特定的蛋白质/适配体相互作用与适配体功能化的硅纳米粒子形成三明治结构。该测定方法对凝血酶具有高特异性。检测限为 1 nM，与许多先前报道的基于荧光的凝血酶检测方法相比，有了显著提高。使用其他修饰的适配体和抗体代替凝血酶结合适配体，该策略可能为生物、制药和纳米机械应用中其他蛋白质的检测提供一种合适的方法。
