Array-based Protein Sensing using an Aggregation Induced Emission Light-Up Probe

Abstract

Protein detection and identification is important for diagnosis of diseases but the development of facile sensing probes still remains challenging. Herein, we present an array-based ‘turn on’ protein sensing platform that can detect and identify proteins using aggregation induced emission luminogens (AIEgens). The water-soluble AIEgens that the fluorescence are initially turned-off, showed strong fluorescence in the presence of nanomolar concentration of proteins via the restriction of the intramolecular rotation (RIR) of the AIEgens. The binding affinities between the AIEgens and proteins were associated with various chemical functional groups on AIEgens, resulting in the distinct fluorescent signal outcomes for each protein. The combining fluorescence outputs provided sufficient information to detect and discriminate proteins of interest by linear discriminant analysis (LDA). Furthermore, the array-based sensor could be used to classify different concentration of specific proteins. This study provides a new sight into the use of the AIEgens as a new type of sensing probe installable in an array-based system.