Xia Xiaodong
School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Hunan University of Science and Technology, Xiangtan, 411201, China.
J Fluoresc. 2024 Jul 23. doi: 10.1007/s10895-024-03853-z.
Determination of total protein content is very important for clinical, pharmaceutical and food chemistry, and the simplicity and rapidity of the existing total protein content assays should be improved. Here, a novel fluorescent sensor for total protein content measurement was described using near-infrared emitting fluorescent gold nanoclusters, which were prepared with egg whites. Trinitrotoluene served as highly efficient quencher to quench the fluorescence of gold nanoclusters. Interestingly, the trinitrotoluene-protein complex that formed by premixing of trinitrotoluene and protein-containing real samples maintained the fluorescence of gold nanoclusters. These new findings provided a novel mechanism to design a fluorescence sensor for determination of total protein levels in various real samples. With available and low-cost bovine serum albumin as reference, the obtained standard curve for total protein determination indicated a linear range of 0.1-3.5 g L with a detection limit of 0.06 g L (3σ rule) and a correlation efficiency (R) of 0.9850. The applicability of the proposed sensor was validated by determination of total protein levels in real samples. Comparison with the existing spectrophotometric methods, the proposed sensor is advantageous of simplicity, rapidity, and cost-effectiveness.
总蛋白含量的测定对于临床、制药和食品化学非常重要，现有的总蛋白含量测定方法的简便性和快速性有待提高。在此，描述了一种使用近红外发射荧光金纳米簇的新型总蛋白含量测量荧光传感器，该荧光金纳米簇由蛋清制备而成。三硝基甲苯用作高效猝灭剂来猝灭金纳米簇的荧光。有趣的是，通过将三硝基甲苯与含蛋白质的实际样品预混合形成的三硝基甲苯 - 蛋白质复合物保持了金纳米簇的荧光。这些新发现为设计用于测定各种实际样品中总蛋白水平的荧光传感器提供了一种新机制。以可得且低成本的牛血清白蛋白为参比，获得的总蛋白测定标准曲线表明线性范围为0.1 - 3.5 g/L，检测限为0.06 g/L（3σ规则），相关系数（R）为0.9850。通过测定实际样品中的总蛋白水平验证了所提出传感器的适用性。与现有的分光光度法相比，所提出的传感器具有简便、快速和成本效益高的优点。
