A turn-on fluorescence-sensing technique for glucose determination based on graphene oxide-DNA interaction

Graphene is a two-dimensional carbon nanomaterial one atom thick. Interactions between graphene oxide (GO) and ssDNA containing different numbers of bases have been proved to be remarkably different. In this paper we propose a novel approach for turn-on fluorescence sensing determination of glucose. Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is produced by glucose oxidase-catalysed oxidation of glucose. In the presence of ferrous iron (Fe(2+)) the hydroxyl radical (•OH) is generated from H2O2 by the Fenton reaction. This attacks FAM-labelled long ssDNA causing irreversible cleavage, as a result of the oxidative effect of •OH, producing an FAM-linked DNA fragment. Because of the weak interaction between GO and short FAM-linked DNA fragments, restoration of DNA fluorescence can be achieved by addition of glucose. Due to the excellent fluorescence quenching efficiency of GO and the specific catalysis of glucose oxidase, the sensitivity and selectivity of this method for GO-DNA sensing are extremely high. The linear range is from 0.5 to 10 μmol L(-1) and the detection limit for glucose is 0.1 μmol L(-1). The method has been successfully used for analysis of glucose in human serum.