Sensing Proteins using Light up – Aggregation Induced Emission (AIE)

Abstract

The concentration of proteins is significantly related to specific diseases for early diagnosis. Until now, protein sensing requires high chemistry, technologies and expensive cost. In here, proteins can be detected and identified by five aggregation induced emission luminogens (AIEgens) using arrays depending on affinity between different functional groups of AIEgens and proteins. Fluorescence patterns will be classified using six proteins such as BSA, transferrin, fibrinogen, β-galactosidase, esterase and acid phosphatase and five AIEgens. In absence of proteins, water-soluble AIE molecules which have six functional groups showed little fluorescence. This is because the AIE molecules can freely rotate and show no fluorescence in soluble solvent. However, in presence of proteins, the interaction with six proteins and functional groups provide distinct fluorescent response patterns because AIE molecules cannot rotate freely and interact with specific proteins showing high fluorescence due to restriction of rotation from intramolecular hydrogen bonding and binding with proteins with two sides. Depending on different fluorescence response, the linear discriminant analysis (LDA), the statistical analysis, can be successfully used to identify the proteins with high accuracy