Aptamer-based turn-on detection of thrombin in biological fluids based on efficient phosphorescence energy transfer from Mn-doped ZnS quantum dots to carbon nanodots.

This paper presents the first example of a sensitive, selective, and stable phosphorescent sensor based on phosphorescence energy transfer (PET) for thrombin that functions through thrombin-aptamer recognition events. In this work, an efficient PET donor-acceptor pair using Mn-doped ZnS quantum dots labeled with thrombin-binding aptamers (TBA QDs) as donors, and carbon nanodots (CNDs) as acceptors has been constructed. Due to the π-π stacking interaction between aptamer and CNDs, the energy donor and acceptor are taken into close proximity, leading to the phosphorescence quenching of donors, TBA QDs. A maximum phosphorescence quenching efficiency as high as 95.9% is acquired. With the introduction of thrombin to the "off state" of the TBA-QDs-CNDs system, the phosphorescence is "turned on" due to the formation of quadruplex-thrombin complexes, which releases the energy acceptor CNDs from the energy donors. Based on the restored phosphorescence, an aptamer-based turn-on thrombin biosensor has been demonstrated by using the phosphorescence as a signal transduction method. The sensor displays a linear range of 0-40 nM for thrombin, with a detection limit as low as 0.013 nM in pure buffers. The proposed aptasensor has also been used to monitor thrombin in complex biological fluids, including serum and plasma, with satisfactory recovery ranging from 96.8 to 104.3%. This is the first time that Mn-doped ZnS quantum dots and CNDs have been employed as a donor-acceptor pair to construct PET-based biosensors, which combines both the photophysical merits of phosphorescence QDs and the superquenching ability of CNDs and thus affords excellent analytical performance. We believe this proposed method could pave the way to a new design of biosensors using PET systems.