Analytical Sciences

Fluorogenic Biosensors Constructed via Aggregation-induced Emission Based on Enzyme-catalyzed Coupling Reactions for Detection of Hydrogen Peroxide

Xiaogang LI,*1,*2 Wenxiu YU,*3 Hongjie ZHAO,*3 Zhiwen FAN,*3 Meng XIAO,*2,*4 Rimo XI,*3 Yingchun XU,*2,*4 and Meng MENG*3

*1 Medical Science Research Center, State Key Laboratory of Complex Severe and Rare Diseases, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Science and Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, China
*2 Beijing Key Laboratory for Mechanisms Research and Precision Diagnosis of Invasive Fungal Diseases, Beijing, China
*3 College of Pharmacy, State Key Laboratory of Medicinal Chemical Biology, Nankai University, Tianjin 300353, China
*4 Department of Clinical Laboratory, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Peking Union Medical College and Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing, China

Hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) is a main reactive oxygen by-product produced in the metabolism of organisms and a common biomarker of oxidative stress. Aggregation-induced emission (AIE) probes for H₂O₂ have been proposed. Such AIEgens mostly use benzeneboronic acid as a recognition group. Recently, a strategy involving enzyme-catalyzed polymerization of AIE compounds shows great potential in AIEgens design. We herein modify the AIE motif, tetraphenylethene (TPE) with o-phenylenediamine (TPE-TAF), which can be oxidated by H₂O₂ in HRP to form an intramolecular phenazine structure. Compared with a similar approach, the proposed strategy is simple and the TPE-TAF showed a sensitive “turn-on” fluorescence with H₂O₂. The detection limit (LOD) is 3.39 μM and the probe is highly specific against H₂O₂. We further verified the reaction mechanism of the enzyme-catalyzed coupling reaction. The probe is a promising candidate as a stable and safe fluorescent substrate in H₂O₂ sensing.

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