A sensitive probe for amyloid fibril detection with strong fluorescence and early response

Xiaolin Zheng; Zhenzhen Xu; Haiyang Li; Hongbing Fu

doi:10.1039/c8ra00751a

A sensitive probe for amyloid fibril detection with strong fluorescence and early response

RSC Adv. 2018 Apr 27;8(29):15870-15875. doi: 10.1039/c8ra00751a.

Authors

Xiaolin Zheng^{1

2}, Zhenzhen Xu¹, Haiyang Li¹, Hongbing Fu^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ Beijing Key Laboratory for Optical Materials and Photonic Devices, Department of Chemistry, Capital Normal University Beijing 100048 People's Republic of China xuzhenzhen@cnu.edu.cn hbfu@cnu.edu.cn.
² College of Life Sciences, Capital Normal University Beijing 100048 People's Republic of China.
³ Tianjin Key Laboratory of Molecular Optoelectronic Sciences, Department of Chemistry, School of Sciences, Tianjin University, Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemical Science and Engineering Tianjin 300072 People's Republic of China.

Abstract

We synthesized a new probe, 4-[2-(2-naphthyl)-(E)-ethenyl]-benzyl(triphenyl)phosphonium bromide (NEB), to detect the formation of amyloid fibrils of bovine insulin. The fluorescence intensity of NEB in the presence of insulin fibrils was 30 times higher than that before fibrillation, with the fluorescence quantum yield increased from 2.5% to 78%. In comparison with the commercially available probe, thioflavin T (ThT), NEB exhibits a 10 times stronger fluorescence and a shorter identification lag phase for detecting insulin fibrillation, indicating a higher sensitivity in detection of insulin oligomers and fibrils.