Phosphorylation-directed assembly of a single quantum dot based nanosensor for protein kinase assay

Protein kinases play crucial roles in intracellular signal transduction and metabolic pathways, and the monitoring of protein kinase activity is essential to the understanding of fundamental biochemical processes and the clinical diagnosis. Here, we demonstrate the phosphorylation-directed assembly of a single quantum dot (QD)-based nanosensor for sensitive detection of cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA). This assay involves (1) the PKA-directed simultaneous phosphorylation and biotinylation of cyanine 5 (Cy5)-labeled substrate peptides, (2) the assembly of phosphorylated and biotinylated peptides onto the surface of the QD, and (3) the illumination of Cy5 by means of fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) between the QD and Cy5. With an adenosine triphosphate (ATP) analogue, γ-biotin-ATP, as the phosphoryl donor, the PKA-catalyzed phosphorylation reaction incorporates the biotin-conjugated phosphate group into the substrate peptides to form the biotinylated peptides. The biotin entity subsequently drives the assembly of peptides onto the surface of streptavidin-functionalized QD to form the sandwiched Cy5-peptide-QD nanostructure, enabling the occurrence of FRET between the QD and Cy5. The FRET signal can be easily recorded by either the conventional fluorescence spectrometer or the total internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF) microscope. In contrast, the absence of PKA cannot lead to the formation of Cy5-peptide-QD complex and no Cy5 signal can be detected. This protein kinase-actuated FRET assay is straightforward, without the involvement of either washing or separation steps, and has a significant advantage of high sensitivity with a detection limit of 9.3 × 10(-6) U/μL. Moreover, this method can be used to estimate the half-maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) value of PKA inhibitor H-89 (N-[2-(p-bromocinnamylamino)ethyl]-5-isoquinolinesulfonamide dihydrochloride) and to monitor forskolin (Fsk)/3-isobutyl-1-methylxanthine (IBMX)-triggered activation of PKA in cell lysates, thus holding great potential for further applications in protein kinase-related biological researches and drug discovery.