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Updated: Jul 16, 2025
Author Spotlight: Engineering Molecular Tools for Disease Detection and Imaging
Published on: December 8, 2023
Fluorescent polythymidine-templated copper nanoclusters aptasensor for sensitive detection of tropomyosin in
Jun-Hu Cheng1, Xinxue Zhang1, Ji Ma2
1School of Food Science and Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510641, China; Academy of Contemporary Food Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou Higher Education Mega Centre, Guangzhou 510006, China; Engineering and Technological Research Centre of Guangdong Province on Intelligent Sensing and Process Control of Cold Chain Foods, & Guangdong Province Engineering Laboratory for Intelligent Cold Chain Logistics Equipment for Agricultural Products, Guangzhou Higher Education Mega Centre, Guangzhou 510006, China.
Abstract:
Tropomyosin (TM) is the main allergen in shellfish. Developing a novel, simple and accurate method to track and detect TM in food products is necessary. In this work, a label-free fluorescent aptasensor based on polythymidine (poly(T))-templated copper nanoclusters (CuNCs) was designed for sensitive detection of TM in processed shrimp products. Magnetic beads (MBs), aptamer and cDNA were used to construct an MBs-aptamer@cDNA complex as a detection probe, and with the presence of TM, the poly(T)-templated CuNCs attached at the end of the cDNA as the fluorescent signal was released from the complex to turn on the fluorescence. Under optimal conditions, the poly(T)-templated CuNCs aptasensor achieved a linear range from 0.1 to 50 μg/mL (R2 = 0.9980), a low limit of detection of 0.0489 μg/mL and an excellent recovery percentage of 105.29%-108.91% in the complex food matrix, providing a new approach for food safety assurance.
