title: A highly sensitive and facile graphene oxide-based nucleic acid probe: Label-free detection of telomerase activity in cancer patient's urine using AIEgens.
abstract: Molecular beacon (MB)-based sensing platforms that consist of a fluorogen-quencher pair play an important role in medical and biological researches. However, the synthesis of both fluorogen and quencher in the nucleic acid probes will increase the burden of organic synthesis works and induce the difficulties for precisely controlling the relative distance between fluorogen and quencher, which may lead to false-positive and false-negative results. In this work, initially we report a single labeled MB (FAM-MB, with carboxyfluorescein as fluorogen and without quencher) thus simplifies MBs with the aid of graphene oxide (GO) to detect telomerase activity. To further simplify this structure, namely label-free strategy, we design a facile, sensitive and selective platform using a label-free beacon (AIE-MB, without fluorogen and quencher), based on aggregation-induced emission fluorogen (silole-R). Upon the addition of telomerase, AIE-MB induced comb-like DNA structure leads to high aggregation of silole-R and thus exhibits strong fluorescence emission. By exploitation of this, we can detect telomerase with superior sensitivity and demonstrate their applications in bladder cancer diagnosis. Compared to single-labeled FAM-MB based telomerase activity assay, the label-free AIE-MB induced method could perform the sensitive detection with high signal-to-background ratio.
authors.affiliation: Hubei Key Laboratory of Bioinorganic Chemistry & Materia Medica, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, National Engineering Research Center for Nanomedicine, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China.
authors.forename: Xiaowen
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Ou
authors.affiliation: Hubei Key Laboratory of Bioinorganic Chemistry & Materia Medica, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, National Engineering Research Center for Nanomedicine, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China.
authors.forename: Fan
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Hong
authors.affiliation: Hubei Key Laboratory of Bioinorganic Chemistry & Materia Medica, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, National Engineering Research Center for Nanomedicine, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China.
authors.forename: Zhenyu
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Hubei Key Laboratory of Bioinorganic Chemistry & Materia Medica, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, National Engineering Research Center for Nanomedicine, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China.
authors.forename: Yong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Luminescent Materials and Devices, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, China.
authors.forename: Zujin
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: Hubei Key Laboratory of Bioinorganic Chemistry & Materia Medica, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, National Engineering Research Center for Nanomedicine, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China.
authors.forename: Pengcheng
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Gao
authors.affiliation: Hubei Key Laboratory of Bioinorganic Chemistry & Materia Medica, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, National Engineering Research Center for Nanomedicine, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China. Electronic address: louxiaoding@hust.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Xiaoding
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Lou
authors.affiliation: Hubei Key Laboratory of Bioinorganic Chemistry & Materia Medica, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, National Engineering Research Center for Nanomedicine, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China.
authors.forename: Fan
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Xia
authors.affiliation: Chinese Academy of Sciences, Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Laboratory of Bio-Inspired Smart Interface Science, Beijing 100190, China.
authors.forename: Shutao
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D015374:Biosensing Techniques / Q000379:methods*; D045744:Cell Line, Tumor; D005452:Fluoresceins / Q000737:chemistry; D005456:Fluorescent Dyes / Q000737:chemistry; D006108:Graphite / Q000737:chemistry*; D006367:HeLa Cells; D006801:Humans; D008958:Models, Molecular; D015341:Nucleic Acid Probes / Q000737:chemistry*; D010087:Oxides / Q000737:chemistry; D019098:Telomerase / Q000652:urine*; D001749:Urinary Bladder Neoplasms / Q000652:urine*
chemical_list: D005452:Fluoresceins; D005456:Fluorescent Dyes; D015341:Nucleic Acid Probes; D010087:Oxides; C024098:6-carboxyfluorescein; D006108:Graphite; D019098:Telomerase
keywords: AIEgens; Graphene oxide; Nucleic acid probe; Telomerase; Urine