한빛사논문
Soonwoo Hong 1, Jada N. Walker 2, Aaron T. Luong 1, Jonathan Mathews 1, Samuel W. J. Shields 2, Yu-An Kuo 1, Yuan-I Chen 1, Trung Duc Nguyen 1, Yujie He 1, Anh-Thu Nguyen 1, Madhav L. Ghimire 3, Min Jun Kim 3, Jennifer S. Brodbelt 2 & Hsin-Chih Yeh 1,4,*
1Department of Biomedical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.
2Department of Chemistry, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.
3Department of Mechanical Engineering, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, USA.
4Texas Materials Institute, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.
*Corresponding author: correspondence to Hsin-Chih Yeh
Abstract
Fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) reporters are commonly used in the final stages of nucleic acid amplification tests to indicate the presence of nucleic acid targets, where fluorescence is restored by nucleases that cleave the FRET reporters. However, the need for dual labelling and purification during manufacturing contributes to the high cost of FRET reporters. Here we demonstrate a low-cost silver nanocluster reporter that does not rely on FRET as the on/off switching mechanism, but rather on a cluster transformation process that leads to fluorescence color change upon nuclease digestion. Notably, a 90 nm red shift in emission is observed upon reporter cleavage, a result unattainable by a simple donor-quencher FRET reporter. Electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry results suggest that the stoichiometric change of the silver nanoclusters from Ag13 (in the intact DNA host) to Ag10 (in the fragments) is probably responsible for the emission colour change observed after reporter digestion. Our results demonstrate that DNA-templated silver nanocluster probes can be versatile reporters for detecting nuclease activities and provide insights into the interactions between nucleases and metallo-DNA nanomaterials.
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