2D zirconium-based metal-organic framework nanosheets for highly sensitive detection of mucin 1: consistency between electrochemical and surface plasmon resonance methods

Abstract

Two-dimensional (2D) zirconium-based metal-organic framework (denoted as 521-MOF) nanosheets with the thickness of 6.0–7.5 nm were prepared with the aid of polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) under the mild conditions and low temperature (50 °C). Since 521-MOF nanosheets displayed good electrochemical activity, high surface area, and strong affinity interaction between the MOF and the oligonucleotides sequences, they can impel the immobilization of large amounts of aptamer strands when applied as a platform of biosensor. As a result, the developed aptasensor exhibited sensitive bio-recognition for the cancer determination marker protein, mucin 1 (MUC1). The combination of electrochemical techniques and surface plasmon resonance spectroscopy (SPR) was performed to probe the kinetic processes of the aptamer immobilization and the MUC1 detection. The consistency between different determination approaches was observed, in which the developed aptasensor based on 521-MOF nanosheets exhibits pretty high sensitivity for detecting MUC1 with a low detect limit of 0.12 and 0.65 pg·ml−1 deduced from electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and SPR, respectively, within the broad concentration range of MUC1 from 0.001 to 0.5 ng·ml−1. Simultaneously, a comparable affinity constant, Ka, was derived from EIS and SPR, which also demonstrates that this new biosensing strategy has high selectivity, stability, reproducibility, and good applicability for the MUC1 detection in the human serum. The present finding indicates that the synthesized 521-MOF nanosheets can be employed in the fields of the biosensing or biomedical diagnosis and explored for different kinds of biosensors.