Determination of adenine based on the fluorescence recovery of the L-Tryptophan-Cu(2+) complex
Related Experiment Video
Updated: Apr 6, 2026

Chemical Modification of the Tryptophan Residue in a Recombinant Ca2+-ATPase N-domain for Studying Tryptophan-ANS FRET
Published on: October 9, 2021
Ruilin Duan1, Chunyan Li1, Shaopu Liu1
1Key Laboratory of Luminescent and Real-Time Analytical Chemistry (Southwest University), Ministry of Education, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China.
Abstract:
A simple and sensitive method for determination of adenine was developed based on fluorescence quenching and recovery of L-Tryptophan (L-Trp). The fluorescence of L-Trp could efficiently quenched by copper ion compared with other common metal ions. Upon addition of adenine (Ade) in L-Trp-Cu(II) system, the fluorescence was reoccurred. Under the optimum conditions, the recovery fluorescence intensity was linearly correlated with the concentration of adenine in the range from 0.34 to 25.0μmolL(-1), with a correlation coefficient (R(2)) of 0.9994. The detection limit (3σ/k) was 0.046μmolL(-1), indicating that this method could applied to detect trace adenine. In this study, amino acids including L-Trp, D-Trp, L-Tyr, D-Tyr, L-Phe, D-Phe were investigated and only L-Trp could well chelated copper ion. Additionally, the mechanism of quench and recovery also were discussed and the method was successfully applied to detect the adenine in DNA with satisfactory results.

