Selective and sensitive turn-on detection of adenosine triphosphate and thrombin based on bifunctional fluorescent oligonucleotide probe.

A bifunctional fluorescent oligonucleotide probe for small molecules and protein detection has been developed based on turn on fluorescence response via the target induced structure-switching of molecular beacon. The two loops of this molecular beacon are designed in such a manner that they consist of thrombin (Tmb) aptamer sequence and adenosine triphosphate (ATP) aptamer sequence, respectively, which are utilized to sense thrombin and ATP. The oligonucleotide forms double stem-loops in the absence of targets, yielding no fluorescence emission because of the FRET from the excited fluorophore to the proximal quencher. Upon addition of the target, the ATP or Tmb, its specific interaction with loop sequence of the hairpin structure induce the separation of reporter fluorophore and the fluorescence quencher of the molecular beacon, resulting in an increase of fluorescence response. Hence, the separate analysis of ATP and Tmb could be realized through only one designed molecular beacon. The detection limits were estimated to be 25 nM for ATP and 12 nM for Tmb, respectively. The results of this study should substantially broaden the perspective for future development of oligonucleotide probe for analysis of other analytes.