title: Facile Probe Design: Fluorescent Amphiphilic Nucleic Acid Probes without Quencher Providing Telomerase Activity Imaging Inside Living Cells.
abstract: Nowadays, the probe with fluorophore but no quencher is promising for its simple preparation, environmental friendliness, and wide application scope. This study designs a new amphiphilic nucleic acid probe (ANAP) based on aggregation-caused quenching (ACQ) effect without any quencher. Upon binding with targets, the dispersion of hydrophobic part (conjugated fluorene, CF) in ANAP is enhanced as a signal-on model for proteins, nucleic acids, and small molecules detection or the aggregation of CF is enhanced as a signal-off model for ion detection. Meanwhile, because of the high specificity of ANAP, a one-step method is developed powerfully for monitoring the telomerase activity not only from the cell extracts but also from 50 clinic urine samples (positive results from 45 patients with bladder cancer and negative results from 5 healthy people). ANAPs can also readily enter into cells and exhibit a good performance for distinguishing natural tumor cells from the tumor cells pretreated by telomerase-related drugs or normal cells. In contrast to our previous results ( Anal. Chem. 2015 , 87 , 3890 - 3894 ), the present CF is a monomer which is just the structure unit of the previous fluorescent polymer. Since the accurate molecular structure and high DNA/CF ratio of the present CF, these advanced experiments obtain an easier preparation of probes, an improved sensitivity and specificity, and broader detectable targets.
authors.affiliation: Hubei Key Laboratory of Bioinorganic Chemistry & Materia Medica, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology , Wuhan 430074, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Yongmei
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Jia
authors.affiliation: Hubei Key Laboratory of Bioinorganic Chemistry & Materia Medica, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology , Wuhan 430074, P. R. 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, Huazhong University of Science and Technology , Wuhan 430074, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Yuan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhuang
authors.affiliation: Hubei Key Laboratory of Bioinorganic Chemistry & Materia Medica, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology , Wuhan 430074, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Mao
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Miao
authors.affiliation: Hubei Key Laboratory of Bioinorganic Chemistry & Materia Medica, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology , Wuhan 430074, P. R. China.
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, Huazhong University of Science and Technology , Wuhan 430074, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Fan
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Xia
mesh_terms: D005449:Fluorenes / Q000737:chemistry; D005456:Fluorescent Dyes / Q000737:chemistry*; D006367:HeLa Cells; D006801:Humans; D057927:Hydrophobic and Hydrophilic Interactions; D009696:Nucleic Acids / Q000737:chemistry*; D061848:Optical Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D013501:Surface-Active Agents / Q000737:chemistry*; D019098:Telomerase / Q000032:analysis* / Q000652:urine; D001749:Urinary Bladder Neoplasms / Q000201:enzymology / Q000652:urine
chemical_list: D005449:Fluorenes; D005456:Fluorescent Dyes; D009696:Nucleic Acids; D013501:Surface-Active Agents; C041509:fluorene; D019098:Telomerase