title: Peptide-Induced AIEgen Self-Assembly: A New Strategy to Realize Highly Sensitive Fluorescent Light-Up Probes.
abstract: Fluorescent light-up probes with aggregation-induced emission (AIE) characteristics have recently attracted great research interest due to their intelligent fluorescence activation mechanism and excellent photobleaching resistance. In this work, we report a new, simple, and generic strategy to design and prepare highly sensitive AIE fluorescent light-up bioprobe through facile incorporation of a self-assembling peptide sequence GFFY between the recognition element and the AIE luminogen (AIEgen). After the bioprobes respond to the targets, the peptide GFFY is capable of inducing the ordered self-assembly of AIEgens, yielding close and tight intermolecular steric interactions to restrict the intramolecular motions of AIEgens for excellent signal output. Using two proof-of-concepts, we have demonstrated that self-assembling peptide-incorporating AIE light-up probes show much higher sensitivity in sensing the corresponding targets in both solutions and cancer cells as compared to those without GFFY induced self-assembly. Taking the probe TPE-GFFYK(DVEDEE-Ac), for example, a detection limit as low as 0.54 pM can be achieved for TPE-GFFYK(DVEDEE-Ac) in caspase-3 detection, which is much lower than that of TPE-K(DVED-Ac) (3.50 pM). This study may inspire new insights into the design of advanced fluorescent molecular probes.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Medicinal Chemical Biology, Key Laboratory of Bioactive Materials, Ministry of Education, College of Life Sciences, and Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemical Science and Engineering (Tianjin), Nankai University , Tianjin 300071, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Aitian
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Han
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Medicinal Chemical Biology, Key Laboratory of Bioactive Materials, Ministry of Education, College of Life Sciences, and Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemical Science and Engineering (Tianjin), Nankai University , Tianjin 300071, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Huaimin
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Division of Biomedical Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology , Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Ryan T K
authors.initials: RT
authors.lastname: Kwok
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Medicinal Chemical Biology, Key Laboratory of Bioactive Materials, Ministry of Education, College of Life Sciences, and Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemical Science and Engineering (Tianjin), Nankai University , Tianjin 300071, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Shenglu
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ji
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Medicinal Chemical Biology, Key Laboratory of Bioactive Materials, Ministry of Education, College of Life Sciences, and Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemical Science and Engineering (Tianjin), Nankai University , Tianjin 300071, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Medicinal Chemical Biology, Key Laboratory of Bioactive Materials, Ministry of Education, College of Life Sciences, and Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemical Science and Engineering (Tianjin), Nankai University , Tianjin 300071, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Deling
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Kong
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Division of Biomedical Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology , Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Ben Zhong
authors.initials: BZ
authors.lastname: Tang
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, National University of Singapore , 4 Engineering Drive 4, Singapore 117585, Singapore.
authors.forename: Bin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Medicinal Chemical Biology, Key Laboratory of Bioactive Materials, Ministry of Education, College of Life Sciences, and Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemical Science and Engineering (Tianjin), Nankai University , Tianjin 300071, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Zhimou
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Medicinal Chemical Biology, Key Laboratory of Bioactive Materials, Ministry of Education, College of Life Sciences, and Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemical Science and Engineering (Tianjin), Nankai University , Tianjin 300071, People's Republic of China.|Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, National University of Singapore , 4 Engineering Drive 4, Singapore 117585, Singapore.
authors.forename: Dan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Ding
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D017209:Apoptosis / Q000187:drug effects; D004305:Dose-Response Relationship, Drug; D005347:Fibroblasts / Q000187:drug effects; D005453:Fluorescence; D005456:Fluorescent Dyes / Q000138:chemical synthesis* / Q000737:chemistry / Q000494:pharmacology; D006367:HeLa Cells; D006801:Humans; D008027:Light; D051379:Mice; D015394:Molecular Structure; D041681:NIH 3T3 Cells; D010455:Peptides / Q000138:chemical synthesis / Q000737:chemistry*; D013329:Structure-Activity Relationship
chemical_list: D005456:Fluorescent Dyes; D010455:Peptides