Selectively monitoring glutathione in human serum and growth-associated living cells using gold nanoclusters

Publication date: Available online 31 October 2019Source: Biosensors and BioelectronicsAuthor(s): Xiaoxue Xie, Zhenqi Peng, Xinyi Hua, Zhifang Wang, Keqin Deng, Xiumei Yang, Haowen HuangAbstractGlutathione (GSH) plays a variety of vital functions in biological systems. Growth-associated change of GSH level in cells might be critical for cell survival and monitoring of GSH in living cells are of great significance for understanding the dynamic link between GSH and some diseases. In this work, chitason micelles templated gold nanoclusters (CM-Au NCs) emitting red fluorescence were prepared with a simple and rapid method, which shows interesting phenomenon of aggregation induced emission (AIE) affected by the size of the chitosan micelles. The unique CM-Au NCs can be used to develop turn-off fluorescent probe for detecting GSH in human serum and living cells based on the reverse process of AIE of CM-Au NCs, completely different from the principle of aggregation caused quenching (ACQ) effect, which can distinguish GSH from other biothiols (cysteine and homocysteine) and quantitatively detect GSH concentration of human serum in healthy people and cancer patients with high sensitivity. The practical application of fluorescent CM-Au NCs for cellular imaging and detecting GSH level indicates ultra-trace changes of GSH levels in normal and cancer cells could be monitored at different growth stages, which reveals that the levels of GSH in cancer cells was always higher than that of nor...
Source: Biosensors and Bioelectronics - Category: Biotechnology Source Type: research