Femtomolar and selective dopamine detection by a gold nanoparticle enhanced surface plasmon resonance aptasensor

Ultrasensitive and selective detection and quantification of dopamine (DA) plays a key role in monitoring neurodegenerative diseases. However, the detection limit reported for DA detection is typically in the lower nM range. Pushing the detection limit to pM or lower for this particular target to cover the physiological levels (< 130 pM) is significant. Herein, DA DNA aptamer (DAAPT) gold nanoparticle (AuNP) conjugate is utilized to enhance the surface plasmon resonance (SPR) signal, which enables to detect and quantify DA in the femtomolar (200 fM) to picomolar range. To the best of our knowledge, this is the lowest detection limit achieved for SPR sensing of dopamine. The as-prepared 10 nm DAAPT-AuNP conjugate demonstrates strong binding affinity (Kd = 3.1 {+/-} 1.4 nM) to the complementary DNA (cDNA) probe on gold chip. The cDNA probe is immobilized to the chip via polydopamine surface chemistry, which allows the Michael addition of any primary amine-terminated biomolecules. By adjusting the concentration of the DAAPT-AuNP conjugate, two calibration curves are generated with dynamic ranges from 100 {micro}M to 2 mM, and from 200 fM to 20 nM, respectively. Both calibration curves have negative slopes, showing good agreement to a dose-response curve in an enzyme inhibition assay. In addition, the sensing strategy is evaluated to be specific for DA detection using a series of DA analogs and other metabolites as potential interferences.