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Published on: August 7, 2021
Detection of methyltransferase activity and inhibitor screening based on rGO-mediated silver enhancement signal
Shuyan Liu1, Jing Su2, Xixiang Xie3
1Center for Medical Genetics & Hunan Key Laboratory of Medical Genetics, School of Life Sciences, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, 410008, China; State Key Laboratory of Targeting Oncology, National Center for International Research of Biotargeting Theranostics, Guangxi Key Laboratory of Biotargeting Theranostics, Collaborative Innovation Center for Targeting Tumor Diagnosis and Therapy, Guangxi Medical University, Nanning, Guangxi, 530021, China.
Abstract:
DNA methylation refers to the chemical modification process of obtaining a methyl group by the covalent bonding of a specific base in DNA sequence with S-adenosyl methionine (SAM) as a methyl donor under the catalysis of methyltransferase (MTase), which is related to the occurrence of multiple diseases. Therefore, the detection of MTase activity is of great significance for disease diagnosis and drug screening. Because reduced graphene oxide (rGO) has a unique planar structure and remarkable catalytic performance, it is not clear whether rGO can rapidly catalyze silver deposition as an effective way of signal amplification. However, in this study, we were pleasantly surprised to find that using H2O2 as a reducing agent, rGO can rapidly catalyze silver deposition, and its catalytic efficiency of silver deposition is significantly better than that of GO. Therefore, based on further verifying the mechanism of catalytic properties of rGO, we constructed a novel electrochemical biosensor (rGO/silver biosensor) for the detection of dam MTase activity, which has high selectivity and sensitivity to MTase in the range of 0.1 U/mL to 10.0 U/mL, and the detection limit is as low as 0.07 U/mL. Besides, this study also used Gentamicin and 5-Fluorouracil as inhibitor models, confirming that the biosensor has a good application prospect in the high-throughput screening of dam MTase inhibitors.
