Coassemble dopamine and GHK tripeptide into fluorescent nanoparticles for pH sensing. (18th July 2020) - Zheng, Fan
Abstract: Fluorescent nanostructures have been widely applied to biomedical researches and clinical diagnosis such as biolabeling/imaging/sensing and have even acted as therapy reagents. Peptide‐based fluorescent nanostructures attract recent interest from biomedical researchers. Inspired by the natural existence of GHK‐Cu complex with a growth factor‐like effect in human blood, here we have developed a novel approach for designing nanosensors through the co‐assembling of two kinds of biomolecules. By making best use of both π‐π stacking between carbon rings and the easy‐oxidation property of an important transmitter molecule, dopamine (DA), we successfully built up a supersensitive and robust fluorescent pH nanosensor by co‐assembling oxidized DA (DAox ) with a tripeptide GHK. The GHK‐DAox nanostructures have a quantum yield of 20.82%, which might be the brightest one among all the current co‐assembling structures merely through unmodified biomolecules. We envision this approach could open a new avenue for not only hybrid nanostructure construction, but also may inspire the bioengineering of in vivo luminescent probes. Abstract : Oxidized dopamine (DAox) molecules and glycine‐histidine‐lysine (GHK) tripeptides can co‐assemble into fluorescent hybrid nanostructures through the π‐π stacking interaction, which inhibits the melanin pathway of dopamine molecules. GHK‐DAo x nanostructures have been demonstrated to sense pH in a colorimetric way