posted on 2024-02-29, 14:34authored byXiaomeng Zhou, Saijin Huang, Wenfeng Liu, Li Shang
The detection of physiological phosphates (PPs) is of
great importance
due to their essential roles in numerous biological processes, but
the efficient detection of different PPs simultaneously remains challenging.
In this work, we propose a fluorescence sensor array for detecting
PPs based on metal-ion-regulated gold nanoclusters (AuNCs) via an
indicator-displacement assay. Zn2+ and Eu3+ are
selected to assemble with two different AuNCs, resulting in quenching
or enhancing their fluorescence. Based on the competitive interaction
of metal ions with AuNCs and PPs, the fluorescence of AuNCs will be
recovered owing to the disassembly of AuNC-metal ion ensembles. Depending
on different PPs’ distinct fluorescence responses, a four-channel
sensor array was established. The array not only exhibits good discrimination
capability for eight kinds of PPs (i.e., ATP, ADP, AMP, GTP, CTP,
UTP, PPi, and Pi) via linear discriminant analysis but also enables
quantitative detection of single phosphate (e.g., ATP) in the presence
of interfering PPs mixtures. Moreover, potential application of the
present sensor array for the discrimination of different PPs in real
samples (e.g., cell lysates and serum) was successfully demonstrated
with a good performance. This work illustrates the great potential
of a metal ion-regulated sensor array as a new and efficient sensing
platform for differential sensing of phosphates as well as other disease-related
biomolecules.