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Detection and quantification of folic acid in serum via a dual-emission fluorescence nanoprobe

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Abstract

Folic acid (FA) is an essential vitamin in humans, and thus, rapid, accurate, and sensitive methods for its quantification in different biological samples are needed. This work describes a novel, simple, and effective dual-emission fluorescence nanoprobe for FA detection and quantification. The probe was covalently linked to amino-modified orange quantum dots (QDs) and carboxyl-modified blue graphene quantum dots (GQDs). The resulting material exhibited two emission peaks at 401 and 605 nm upon excitation at 310 nm. The probe had good selectivity and sensitivity toward FA with an exceptionally low detection limit (LOD = 0.09 nM). This probe was effectively used to quantify FA in animal serum samples. The method has potential utility for FA analysis in different types of biological samples.

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Acknowledgments

We thank LetPub (www.letpub.com) for its linguistic assistance during the preparation of this manuscript.

Funding

This work was supported by “The National Key R&D Program of China” (No. 2016YFD0401202) and the Special Project of Tianjin Innovation Platform (No. 17PTGCCX00230).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Food Nutrition and Safety, College of Biotechnology and Food Engineering, Tianjin University of Science and Technology, Tianjin, 300457, China

    Yu He & Junping Wang

  2. Tianjin Key Laboratory of Food Science and Health, School of Medicine, Nankai University, Tianjin, 300071, China

    Shuo Wang

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  1. Yu He
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  2. Shuo Wang
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  3. Junping Wang
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Correspondence to Junping Wang.

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He, Y., Wang, S. & Wang, J. Detection and quantification of folic acid in serum via a dual-emission fluorescence nanoprobe. Anal Bioanal Chem 411, 7481–7487 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-019-02121-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-019-02121-5

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