title: 2-Aminopurine-modified DNA homopolymers for robust and sensitive detection of mercury and silver.
abstract: Heavy metal detection is a key topic in analytical chemistry. DNA-based metal recognition has advanced significantly producing many specific metal ligands, such as thymine for Hg2+and cytosine for Ag+. For practical applications, however, robust sensors that can work in a diverse range of salt concentrations need to be developed, while most current sensing strategies cannot meet this requirement. In this work, 2-aminopurine (2AP) is used as a fluorescence label embedded in the middle of four 10-mer DNA homopolymers. 2AP can be quenched up to 98% in these DNA without an external quencher. The interaction between 2AP and all common metal ions is studied systematically for both free 2AP base and 2AP embedded DNA homopolymers. With such low background, Hg2+induces up to 14-fold signal enhancement for the poly-T DNA, and Ag+enhances up to 10-fold for the poly-C DNA. A detection limit of 3nM is achieved for both metals. With these four probes, silver and mercury can be readily discriminated from the rest. A comparison with other signaling methods was made using fluorescence resonance energy transfer, graphene oxide, and SYBR Green I staining, respectively, confirming the robustness of the 2AP label. Detection of Hg2+in Lake Huron water was also achieved with a similar sensitivity. This work has provided a comprehensive fundamental understanding of using 2AP as a label for metal detection, and has achieved the highest fluorescence enhancement for non-protein targets.
authors.affiliation: School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, 410013 China; Department of Chemistry, Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L3G1 Canada.
authors.forename: Wenhu
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, 410013 China.
authors.forename: Jinsong
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ding
authors.affiliation: School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, 410013 China; Department of Chemistry, Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L3G1 Canada. Electronic address: liujw@uwaterloo.ca.
authors.forename: Juewen
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Liu
mesh_terms: D015075:2-Aminopurine / Q000737:chemistry*; D052157:Aptamers, Nucleotide / Q000737:chemistry*; D001483:Base Sequence; D015374:Biosensing Techniques / Q000191:economics / Q000379:methods*; D002412:Cations / Q000032:analysis; D003596:Cytosine / Q000737:chemistry; D005453:Fluorescence; D005456:Fluorescent Dyes / Q000737:chemistry*; D006108:Graphite / Q000737:chemistry; D060106:Lakes / Q000032:analysis; D057230:Limit of Detection; D008628:Mercury / Q000032:analysis*; D010087:Oxides / Q000737:chemistry; D012834:Silver / Q000032:analysis*; D013050:Spectrometry, Fluorescence / Q000191:economics / Q000379:methods; D013941:Thymine / Q000737:chemistry; D014874:Water Pollutants, Chemical / Q000032:analysis*
chemical_list: D052157:Aptamers, Nucleotide; D002412:Cations; D005456:Fluorescent Dyes; D010087:Oxides; D014874:Water Pollutants, Chemical; D012834:Silver; D015075:2-Aminopurine; D006108:Graphite; D003596:Cytosine; D008628:Mercury; D013941:Thymine
keywords: Aptamers; Biosensors; DNA; Fluorescence; Metal ions