Turn-on fluorescent dopamine sensing based on in situ formation of visible light emitting polydopamine nanoparticles

Dopamine is the principle biomarker for diseases such as schizophrenia, Huntington's, and Parkinson's, and the need is urgent for rapid and sensitive detection methods for diagnosis and monitoring of such diseases. In this Article, we report a turn-on fluorescent method for rapid dopamine sensing which is based on monitoring the intrinsic fluorescence of in situ synthesized polydopamine nanoparticles. The assay uses only a common base and an acid, NaOH and HCl to initiate and stop the polymerization reaction, respectively, which makes the assay extremely simple and low cost. First, we studied the in situ optical properties of polydopamine nanoparticles, for the first time, which formed under different alkaline conditions in order to determine optimum experimental parameters. Then, under optimized conditions we demonstrated high sensitivity (40 nM) and excellent selectivity of the assay. With its good analytical figures of merit, the described method is very promising for detection of dopamine related diseases.