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Co–N–C single-atom nanozymes with oxidase-like activity for highly sensitive detection of biothiols

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Abstract

Biothiol detection is of great importance for clinical disease diagnosis. Previous nanozyme-based colorimetric sensors for biothiol detection showed unsatisfactory catalytic activity, which led to a high detection limit. Therefore, developing new nanozymes with the high catalytic activity for biothiol detection is extremely necessary. Recently, single-atom nanozymes (SAzymes) have attracted much attention in biosensing due to their 100% atom utilization and excellent catalytic activity. Most previous works focus on the peroxidase-like activity of Fe-based SAzymes by using unstable and destructive H2O2 as the oxidant. It is essential to develop new SAzymes with high oxidase-like activity for biosensing to break through the limitation. Herein, Co–N–C SAzymes with high oxidase-like activity are explored. Furthermore, Co–N–C SAzymes are used as a biosensor for colorimetric detection of biothiols (GSH/Cys) based on the inhibition of thiols toward the oxidase-like activity of Co–N–C SAzymes, which showed high sensitivity with a low detection limit of 0.07 µM for GSH and 0.06 µM for Cys. Besides, the method showed good reproducibility and high selectivity against other amino acids. This work offers new insights using Co–N–C SAzymes in the biosensing field.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant 31971314), the Distinguished Youth Foundation of Anhui Province (1808085J05), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China (Grant No. JZ2017HGPA0164, JZ2021HGTB0120), and the Key research and development plan of Anhui Province (202104b11020015).

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  1. Liping Sun and Yong Yan contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, 230009, Anhui, China

    Liping Sun, Zijue Zhou & Yi Feng

  2. School of Food and Biological Engineering, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, Anhui, 230009, People’s Republic of China

    Yong Yan, Shuai Chen, Wei Tao, Chao Li & Feng Wang

  3. Key Laboratory of Metabolism and Regulation for Major Diseases of Anhui Higher Education Institutes, College of Food and Biological Engineering, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, Anhui, China

    Feng Wang

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  1. Liping Sun
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Contributions

Liping Sun and Yong Yan designed the project, carried out experiments, analyzed the data, and wrote the original draft. Shuai Chen, Zijue Zhou, and Wei Tao analyzed the data, discussed the results, and read the final manuscript. Chao Li, Yi Feng, and Feng Wang supervised the project, gave suggestions to revise the manuscript, and provided financial support.

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Correspondence to Chao Li, Yi Feng or Feng Wang.

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Sun, L., Yan, Y., Chen, S. et al. Co–N–C single-atom nanozymes with oxidase-like activity for highly sensitive detection of biothiols. Anal Bioanal Chem 414, 1857–1865 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-021-03816-4

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