Graphene oxide for fluorescence-mediated enzymatic activity assays

Graphene oxide (GO), an oxidized 2-dimensional carbon material, has been studied actively in both academia and industry due to its unique physicochemical properties including high surface area, excellent aqueous dispersibility, quenching capability of contiguous fluorophores and adsorption affinity with diverse biomolecules. Particularly, GO has been widely used in biological applications involving small molecule biosensors, enzymatic reaction monitoring, drug delivery and therapeutic applications. Among these rapidly developing fields, we focused on the current advancements of fluorescence mediated activity assay platforms for enzymes including nucleases, methyltransferases, protein kinases, caspases and helicases by using affinity and fluorescence quenching capability of GO with fluorophore labelled biomolecule substrates in the aqueous solution phase, and its important applications with future perspectives in this article.