Dual-emissive phenylalanine dehydrogenase-templated gold nanoclusters as a new highly sensitive label-free ratiometric fluorescent probe: heavy metal ions and thiols measurement with live-cell imaging

Phenylalanine dehydrogenase (PheDH) has been proposed as an ideal protein scaffold for the one-step and green synthesis of highly efficient multifunctional gold nanoclusters. The PheDH-stabilized fluorescent gold nanoclusters (PheDH-AuNCs) with dual emission/single excitation exhibited excellent and long-term stability, high water solubility, large Stokes shift and intense photoluminescence. Selectivity studies demonstrated that the red fluorescence emission intensity of PheDH-AuNCs was obviously decreased in less than 10 min by the addition of mercury, copper, cysteine or glutathione under the single excitation at 360 nm, without significant change in the blue emission of the PheDH-AuNCs. Therefore, the as-prepared PheDH-AuNCs as a new excellent fluorescent probe were successfully employed to develop a simple, rapid, low cost, label- and surface modification-free nanoplatform for the ultrasensitive and selective detection of Hg(2+), Cu(2+), Cys and GSH through a ratiometric fluorescence system with wide linear ranges and detection limits of 1.6, 2.4, 160 and 350 nM, respectively which were lower than previous reports. In addition, the results showed that PheDH-AuNCs can be used for the detection of toxic heavy metal ions and small biomarker thiols in biological and aqueous samples with acceptable recoveries. Interestingly, PheDH-AuNCs also displayed a promising potential for live-cell imaging due to their low toxicity and great chemical- and photo-stability.