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Controlled synthesis of polydopamine: A new strategy for highly sensitive fluorescence turn-on detection of acetylcholinesterase activity

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Abstract

A new water soluble fluorescent coronene probe (CTCA) was synthesized and is shown to display strong fluorescence (with excitation/emission maxima at 313/450 nm) in aqueous solution. Dopamine was oxidized under air to form polydopamine (PDA) which quenches the fluorescence of CTCA. The enzyme acetylcholinesterase (AChE) is known catalyze the hydrolysis of acetylthiocholine to produce thiocholine. Thiocholine inhibits the polymerization of DA, and this leads to recovery in CTCA fluorescence. These findings form the basis for a new method for detection of AChE activity. The assay has a detection limit as low as 0.05 mU·mL−1 of AChE. It is highly selective, and other enzymes do no noticeably interfere. It was applied to the determination of AChE activity in (spiked) human serum, and of AChE inhibitors in (spiked) lake water samples.

Controlled synthesis of polydopamine for the highly sensitive and selective sensing of AChE activity is reported for the first time.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51761145102, 21561162004), and the Science and Technology Development Project of Jilin Province (International Collaboration Program, 20160414040GH).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Electroanalytical Chemistry, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, 130022, People’s Republic of China

    Meiding Yang, Huipeng Zhou, Yunyi Zhang, Zhenzhen Hu, Niu Niu & Cong Yu

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, People’s Republic of China

    Meiding Yang, Zhenzhen Hu, Niu Niu & Cong Yu

  3. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, People’s Republic of China

    Yunyi Zhang

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  1. Meiding Yang
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Correspondence to Cong Yu.

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Yang, M., Zhou, H., Zhang, Y. et al. Controlled synthesis of polydopamine: A new strategy for highly sensitive fluorescence turn-on detection of acetylcholinesterase activity. Microchim Acta 185, 132 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00604-018-2678-9

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