title: Specific Light-Up Probe with Aggregation-Induced Emission for Facile Detection of Chymase.
abstract: Human chymases are important proteases abundant in mast cell granules. The elevated level of chymases and other serine proteases is closely related to inflammatory and immunoregulatory functions. Monitoring of the chymase level is very important, however, the existing methods remain limited and insufficient. In this work, a light-up probe of TPETH-2(CFTERD3) (where CFTERD is Cys-Phe-Thr-Glu-Arg-Asp) was developed for chymase detection. The probe has low fluorescent signal in aqueous media, but its solubility can be changed after hydrolysis by chymase, giving significant fluorescence turn-on with a high signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio. The probe has excellent selectivity to chymase compared to other proteins and can effectively differentiate chymase from other enzymes (e.g., chymotrypsin and trypsin) in the same family (E.C. 3.4.21). The detection limit is calculated to be 0.1 ng/mL in PBS buffer with a linear range of 0-9.0 ng/mL. A comparison study using TPETH-2(CFTERD2) as the probe reveals the importance of molecular design in realizing the high S/N ratio. TPETH-2(CFTERD3) thus represents a simple turn-on probe for chymase detection, with real-time and direct readout and also excellent sensitivity and selectivity.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, National University of Singapore , 4 Engineering Drive 4, Singapore 117585, Singapore.
authors.forename: Ruoyu
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, National University of Singapore , 4 Engineering Drive 4, Singapore 117585, Singapore.
authors.forename: Chong-Jing
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, National University of Singapore , 4 Engineering Drive 4, Singapore 117585, Singapore.
authors.forename: Guangxue
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Feng
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, National University of Singapore , 4 Engineering Drive 4, Singapore 117585, Singapore.
authors.forename: Fang
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.affiliation: Interdisciplinary Research Group in Infectious Diseases, Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research & Technology (SMART) , Singapore 138602, Singapore.
authors.forename: Jigang
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, National University of Singapore , 4 Engineering Drive 4, Singapore 117585, Singapore.|Institute of Materials Research and Engineering, Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) , 2 Fusionopolis Way, Innovis, Singapore 138634, Singapore.
authors.forename: Bin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Liu