Nitrogen-doped cyan-emissive carbon quantum dots for fluorescence tetracycline detection and lysosome imaging

Tetracyclines (TCs) prevent the growth of peptide chains and the synthesis of proteins, and they are widely used to inhibit Gram-positive and -negative bacteria. For the detection of tetracyclines in cell and in vitro, a convenient and simple detection system based on nitrogen-doped cyan carbon quantum dots (C-CQDs) was developed. C-CQDs have excellent excitation-independent properties, the best optimal excitation peak is 360 nm and the best emission peak is 480 nm. Based on the inner filter effect (IFE), the fluorescence intensity of C-CQDs in solution decreases with the increase of tetracyclines. In the range of 0–100 μM, C-CQDs present a good linear relationship with three tetracyclines (CTC, TET, OCT), with R(2) all greater than 0.999. C-CQDs can detect tetracycline in milk samples with recovery in the range of 98.2–103.6%, which demonstrates their potential and broad application in real samples. Furthermore, C-CQDs exhibit excellent lysosomal targeting, as indicated by a Pearson's coefficient of 0.914 and an overlap of 0.985. The internalisation of C-CQDs was mainly affected by lipid raft-mediated endocytosis in endocytic pathway experiments. These experiments indicate that C-CQDs can be effectively used to detect TC content and target lysosomes as an alternative to commercial dyes.