γ-Aminobutyric acid-modified graphene oxide as a highly selective and low-toxic fluorescent nanoprobe for relay recognition of copper(II) and cysteine.

A sensitive and selective graphene oxide (GO)-based fluorescent nanoprobe has been developed for the relay recognition of Cu2+ and cysteine (Cys) by covalently grafting γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) onto GO. The fluorescence of the probe (with excitation/emission maxima at 360/445 nm) is selectively quenched by Cu2+ via static fluorescence quenching. Fluorescence drops linearly as the concentration of Cu2+ is increased from 50 nM to 1.0 µM, and the detection limit for Cu2+ is calculated as 15 nM. By virtue of the strong interaction between Cys and Cu2+, the GO-GABA/Cu2+ complex can further sensitively recognize Cys in a "switch-on" mode. The linear range for Cys detection is from 50 nM to 1.0 µM, and the detection limit is 38 nM. The probe has low cytotoxicity, and it works well inside living cells, which is verified by the successful application in imaging of LLC-PK1 cells. Graphical abstract Gamma-Aminobutyric Acid (GABA) modified graphene oxide (GO) is a highly selective nanoprobe for the fluorometric relay recognition of Cu2+ and Cys.

A label-free and enzyme-free fluorescent aptasensor for sensitive detection of acetamiprid based on AT-rich dsDNA-templated copper nanoparticles.

A label-free and enzyme-free aptasensor for sensitive assay of acetamiprid has been established using AT-rich double-stranded (ds) DNA-templated copper nanoparticles (CuNPs) as fluorescent probe. In this work, two hairpin DNA, HP1 and HP2, were elaborately designed with AT-rich DNA sequences in their loops. The aptamer of acetamiprid was located at the 3'-terminal of HP1, which was caged in the stem of HP1. Upon the addition of acetamiprid, the aptamer could combine with acetamiprid to form a target/aptamer complex, and thus its free 5'-terminal was released. Subsequently, the protruded 3'-terminal of HP2 could hybridize with the free 5'-terminal of HP1 to form a stable AT-rich dsDNA. When it interacted with Cu2+ and ascorbic acid (AA), the AT-rich dsDNA/CuNPs were generated with strong fluorescence, offering a "switch-on" detection of acetamiprid. The developed strategy could high selectively detect acetamiprid at the concentration as low as 2.37 nM. Moreover, the possibility of this strategy for the food sample analysis was also investigated. The obtained results demonstrate that the developed strategy has a promising application potential for acetamiprid assay in food safety fields.

DFT investigation on dihydrogen-bonded amine-borane complexes.

The DFT method has been employed in the exploration on dihydrogen-bonded amine-borane complexes, with a special emphasis on the dimerization and substituent group effect. Stable dihydrogen bonded complexes can be generated from these amine-borane monomers with the appearance of NH(δ+)…H(δ-)B interactions. The binding energy decreases gradually with the increase of the steric effect of the substituents. The substituent group number mainly varies the C-N bond length. The dimerization generates close H…H and influences predominantly the N-B distance. The effect of dimerization on IR and vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) spectra is stronger than that of the number of substituent groups, which leads to distinct NBO charge variation on α-C. Both the substituent group number and dimerization enhance the chemical shift difference between hydrogen atoms covalently bonded to N and B, Δδ H-H, which can be hired as an index for structural determination. It is proposed that amine-borane complexes with more substituent groups in higher degree of polymerization are potentially interesting materials for hydrogen storage. Graphical Abstract Both the number of substituent group and dimerization enhance the chemical shift difference of hydrogen atoms covalently bonded on N and B, Δδ H-H, which can be employed as an index for the structural determination.