Natural Protein Photon Upconversion Supramolecular Assemblies for Background-Free Biosensing

• DOI: 10.1021/jacs.4c06012
• Publication Date: 2024-07-29T04:44:10Z
• Authors: Hong-Juan Feng; Le Zeng; Jia-Yao Li; Wen-Yue Lin; Fang Qi; Lin-Han Jiang; Ming-Yu Zhang; Yang Zhao; Ling Huang; Dai-Wen Pang
• Keywords: Photon Upconversion; Sarcosine; Nanoprobe

The diagnosis of disease biomarkers is crucial for the identification, monitoring, and prognostic assessment malignant disease. However, biological samples with autofluorescence, complex components, heterogeneity pose major challenges to reliable biosensing. Here, we report self-assembly natural proteins triplet–triplet annihilation upconversion (TTA-UC) pair form upconverted protein clusters (∼8.2 ± 1.1 nm), which were further assembled into photon supramolecular assemblies (PUSA). This PUSA exhibited unique features, including a small size (∼44.1 4.1 oxygen tolerance, superior biocompatibility, easy storage via lyophilization, all are long sought after materials. Further, have revealed that steric hindrance annihilator suppresses stacking in PUSA, vital maintaining water dispersibility enhancing performance PUSA. In conjunction sarcosine oxidase, this near infrared (NIR)-excitable nanoprobe could perform background-free biosensing urinary sarcosine, common biomarker prostatic carcinoma (PCa). More importantly, not only allows qualitative identification from PCa patients by unaided eye under NIR-light-emitting diode (LED) illumination but also quantifies concentration sarcosine. These remarkable findings propelled materials new evolutionary stage expedited progress clinical diagnostics.