Nanoparticle-catalyzed reductive bleaching for fabricating turn-off and enzyme-free amplified colorimetric bioassays

Nanoparticle-catalyzed reductive bleaching reactions of colored substrates are emerging as a class of novel indicator reactions for fabricating enzyme-free amplified colorimetric biosensing (turn-off mode), which are exactly opposite to the commonly used oxidative coloring processes of colorless substrates in traditional enzyme-catalyzed amplified colorimetric bioassays (turn-on mode). In this work, a simple theoretical analysis shows that the sensitivity of this colorimetric bioassay can be improved by increasing the amplification factor (kcatΔt), or enhancing the binding affinity between analyte and receptor (Kd), or selecting the colored substrates with high extinction coefficients (ε). Based on this novel strategy, we have developed a turn-off and cost-effective amplified colorimetric thrombin aptasensor. This aptasensor made full use of sandwich binding of two affinity aptamers for increased specificity, magnetic particles for easy separation and enrichment, and gold nanoparticle (AuNP)-catalyzed reductive bleaching reaction to generate the amplified colorimetric signal. With 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) as the non-dye colored substrate, colorimetric bioassay of thrombin was achieved by the endpoint method with a detection limit of 91pM. In particular, when using methylene blue (MB) as the substrate, for the first time, a more convenient and efficient kinetic-based colorimetric thrombin bioassay was achieved without the steps of acidification termination and magnetic removal of particles, with a low detection limit of 10pM, which was superior to the majority of the existing colorimetric thrombin aptasensors. The proposed colorimetric protocol is expected to hold great promise in field analysis and point-of-care applications.

Dual fluorophore PNA FIT-probes--extremely responsive and bright hybridization probes for the sensitive detection of DNA and RNA

Fluorescently labeled oligonucleotides are commonly employed as probes to detect specific DNA or RNA sequences in homogeneous solution. Useful probes should experience strong increases in fluorescent emission upon hybridization with the target. We developed dual labeled peptide nucleic acid probes, which signal the presence of complementary DNA or RNA by up to 450-fold enhancements of fluorescence intensity. This enabled the very sensitive detection of a DNA target (40 pM LOD), which was detectable at less than 0.1% of the beacon concentration. In contrast to existing DNA-based molecular beacons, this PNA-based method does not require a stem sequence to enforce dye-dye communication. Rather, the method relies on the energy transfer between a "smart" thiazole orange (TO) nucleotide, which requires formation of the probe-target complex in order to become fluorescent, and terminally appended acceptor dyes. To improve upon fluorescence responsiveness the energy pathways were dissected. Hydrophobic, spectrally mismatched dye combinations allowed significant (99.97%) decreases of background emission in the absence of a target. By contrast, spectral overlap between TO donor emission and acceptor excitation enabled extremely bright FRET signals. This and the large apparent Stokes shift (82 nm) suggests potential applications in the detection of specific RNA targets in biogenic matrices without the need of sample pre-processing prior to detection.

A thermally-stable enzyme detection assay that amplifies signal autonomously in water without assistance from biological reagents

This Communication describes a thermally-stable small molecule and a corresponding assay strategy that autonomously amplifies a colorimetric signal when a specific enzyme biomarker is detected.

Enhanced chemiluminescent detection scheme for trace vapor sensing in pneumatically-tuned hollow core photonic bandgap fibers

We demonstrate an in-fiber gas phase chemical detection architecture in which a chemiluminescent (CL) reaction is spatially and spectrally matched to the core modes of hollow photonic bandgap (PBG) fibers in order to enhance detection efficiency. A peroxide-sensitive CL material is annularly shaped and centered within the fiber's hollow core, thereby increasing the overlap between the emission intensity and the intensity distribution of the low-loss fiber modes. This configuration improves the sensitivity by 0.9 dB/cm compared to coating the material directly on the inner fiber surface, where coupling to both higher loss core modes and cladding modes is enhanced. By integrating the former configuration with a custom-built optofluidic system designed for concomitant controlled vapor delivery and emission measurement, we achieve a limit-of-detection of 100 parts per billion (ppb) for hydrogen peroxide vapor. The PBG fibers are produced by a new fabrication method whereby external gas pressure is used as a control knob to actively tune the transmission bandgaps through the entire visible range during the thermal drawing process.