Specifically and Visually Detect Methyl-Mercury and Ethyl-Mercury in Fish Sample Based on DNA-Templated Alloy Ag-Au...

Methyl-mercury (CH₃Hg⁺) and ethyl-mercury (C₂H₅Hg⁺) have much higher toxicity than Hg²⁺ and can be more easily accumulated by organisms to form severe bioamplification. Hence, the specific and on-site detection of CH₃Hg⁺ and C₂H₅Hg⁺ in seafood is of great significance and a hard challenge. We herein designed two T-rich aptamers (H_T5 and H_T7) for specifically recognizing CH₃Hg⁺ and the total of CH₃Hg⁺ and C₂H₅Hg⁺, respectively. In the presence of all Au³⁺, Ag⁺, and T-rich aptamer, CH₃Hg⁺ and C₂H₅Hg⁺ specifically and preferentially bind with aptamer and thus induced the formation of alloy Ag-Au nanoparticles after reduction, which led to the color change in solution. This provided a sensing platform for the instrument-free visual discrimination and detection of CH₃Hg⁺ and C₂H₅Hg⁺. By using H_T5 as probe, the method can be used to detect as low as 5.0 μM (equivalent to 1.0 μg Hg/g) of CH₃Hg⁺ by bare eye observation and 0.5 μM (equivalent to 100 ng Hg/g) of CH₃Hg⁺ by UV-visible spectrometry. By using H_T7 as probe, the method can be used to detect the total concentration of CH₃Hg⁺ and C₂H₅Hg⁺ with a visual detection limit of 5.0 μM (equivalent to 1.0 μg Hg/g) and a UV-visible spectrometry detection limit of 0.6 μM (equivalent to 120 ng Hg/g). The proposed method has been successfully used to detect CH₃Hg⁺ and C₂H₅Hg⁺ in fish muscle samples with a recovery of 101-109% and a RSD ( n = 6) < 8%. The success of this study provided a potential method for the specific and on-site detection of CH₃Hg⁺ and C₂H₅Hg⁺ in seafood by only bare eye observation.