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Updated: Mar 10, 2026
Synthesis and Characterization of Functionalized Metal-organic Frameworks
Published on: September 5, 2014
A Rapid and Facile Detection for Specific Small-Sized Amino Acids Based on Target-Triggered Destruction of Metal
Wei Li1, Xue Qi1, Chao-Yue Zhao1
1Tianjin Key Laboratory of Biosensing and Molecular Recognition, College of Chemistry, Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemical Science and Engineering, and ‡Department of Chemistry, Key Laboratory of Advanced Energy Materials Chemistry (Ministry of Education), Nankai University , 94 Weijin Road, Tianjin 300071, People's Republic of China.
Abstract:
Most of the reported metal organic frameworks (MOFs)-based DNA sensors were developed by utilizing the different adsorption capacities of MOFs to different structural DNAs (for example, single-stranded DNAs (ssDNAs) and double-stranded DNAs (dsDNAs)) or ssDNAs with different lengths. Herein, we introduced another strategy for the design of MOFs-based biosensing platforms. We found that specific small-sized amino acids (for example, glycine and serine) could lead to the destruction of the MOFs formed by [Cu(mal)(bpy)]·2H2O], thus recovering the fluorescence of a fluorophore-labeled ssDNA that had been quenched by MOFs. The corresponding working mechanism was discussed. On the basis of this finding, a mix-and-detect fluorescence method was designed for the turn-on detection of specific small-sized amino acids. The feasibility of its use in real serum samples was also demonstrated. Besides biosensing applications, the discovery of amino acids-triggered destruction of MOFs can also enrich the building blocks of molecular logic gate. As an example, a biomolecular logic gate that performs OR logic operation was constructed using glycine and a DNA strand as inputs.
