Abstract
As lactoferrin (LF) plays an essential role in physiological processes, the detection of LF has attracted increasing attention in the field of disease diagnosis. However, most current methods require expensive equipment, laborious pretreatment, and long processing time. In this work, carboxyl-rich carbon dots (COOH-CDs) were facilely prepared through a one-step, low-cost hydrothermal process with tartaric acid as the precursor. The COOH-CDs had abundant carboxyl on the surface and showed strong blue emission. Moreover, COOH-CDs were used as a fluorescent sensor toward Fe3+ and showed high selectivity for Fe3+ with the limit of detection (LoD) of 3.18 nM. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations were performed to reveal the mechanism of excellent performance for Fe3+ detection. Meanwhile, COOH-CDs showed no obvious effect on lactobacillus plantarum growth, which means that COOH-CDs have good biocompatibility. Due to the nontoxicity and excellent detection performance for Fe3+, COOH-CDs were employed as a fluorescent sensor toward LF and showed satisfying performance with an LoD of 0.776 µg/mL, which was better than those of the other methods.
Highlights
Lactoferrin (LF), one number of transferrin families, is a 78 kDa iron-binding glycoprotein that was primarily identified from bovine milk in 1939 [1]
COOH-carbon dots (CDs) were employed as a fluorescent sensor toward LF and showed satisfied performance
The absorption peaks at 1747 and 1082 cm−1 were attributed to the stretching vibrations of C=O and C-O-C [25]. These results indicated that abundant -OH and -COOH existed on the COOH-CD’s surface
Summary
Lactoferrin (LF), one number of transferrin families, is a 78 kDa iron-binding glycoprotein that was primarily identified from bovine milk in 1939 [1]. Various methods have been developed to detect LF, including high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS), electrochemiluminescence (ECL), and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELLSA) [8,9]. The benefits of these methods include their high sensitivity, easy operation, and wide detection range. Choi’s group found that Fe3+ binding in LF had a pivotal influence on LF physiological function, which can control the survival and death of the cell [15] These reports indicated that the Fe3+ embedded into LF determined the functional property of LF, and the detection of Fe3+ in LF could be used to analyze the biological activity of LF [16].
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