Analytical Sciences

Design of a Fluorescence Turn-on and Label-free Aptasensor Using the Intrinsic Quenching Power of G-Quadruplex to AMT

Dandan WANG,* Fenghua GENG,** Yongxiang WANG,**,*** Yu MA,** Guixin LI,* Peng QU,** Congying SHAO,*** and Maotian XU**

*College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xinjiang Normal University, Urumqi, 830054, China
**Henan Key Laboratory of Biomolecular Recognition and Sensing, Henan Joint International Research Laboratory of Chemo/Biosensing and Early Diagnosis of Major Diseases, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shangqiu Normal University, Shangqiu, 476000, China
***College of Chemistry and Material Science, Huaibei Normal University, Huaibei, 235000, China

A novel fluorescent aptasensor based on the G-quadruplex induced fluorescent quenching of psoralen and the competitive interactions between 4′-aminomethyl-4,5′,8-trimethylpsoralen (AMT), adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and G-rich DNA functionalized split ATP aptamer was proposed. The binding of ATP to the G-rich DNA functionalized split aptamer induced a significant enhancement in fluorescence emission intensity while undergoing excitation at 340 nm. Under the optimal conditions, the developed aptasensor showed high selectivity and good accuracy for detecting ATP. The practicality of the proposed aptasensor has been confirmed by successfully analyzing ATP in spiked human blood serum samples with satisfactory results. As far as we know, this is the first time that the intrinsic quenching ability of G-quadruplex was applied to simply construct a fluorescence turn-on and label-free aptasensor. On account of the superiority of the simplicity of the design strategy, more work is expected in the future to develop a variety of novel sensors for other important analytes using the quenching capability of G-quadruplex through reasonable designs.

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