Peptide beacons: a new design for polypeptide-based optical biosensors

摘要: Both epitope mapping and other in vitro selection techniques produce short polypeptides that tightly specifically bind to any of a wide range macromolecular targets. Here, we demonstrate potentially general means converting such into optical biosensors. The sensing architecture have developed, termed peptide beacons, is based on the observation that, whereas peptides are almost invariably unfolded highly dynamic, they become rigid when complexed target. Using this effect segregate long-lived fluorophore from an electron transfer based, contact quencher (both covalently attached peptide), produced robust sensor for anti-HIV antibodies. binding-induced segregation fluorophore-quencher pair produces 6-fold increase emission, thus allowing us readily detect as low ∼250 pM target antibody. Because folding visible-light fluorophore, it suffic...