Different from popular mimics of bimetallic nuclear centers bridged by a hydroxide, a total coordination sphere of the active center of organophosphorus hydrolase was assembled in metal-organic frameworks by rational design and combination of ligands, which resulted in efficient destruction of nerve agent stimulants without a base as a co-catalyst.

No abstract

Trypsin is important during the regulation of pancreatic exocrine function. The detection of trypsin activity is currently limited because of the need for the substrate to be labeled with a fluorescent tag. A label-free fluorescent method has been developed to monitor trypsin activity. The designed peptide probe consists of six arginine molecules and a cysteine terminus and can be conjugated to DNA-stabilized silver nanoclusters (DNA-AgNCs) by Ag-S bonding to enhance fluorescence. The peptide probe can also be adsorbed to the surface of graphene oxide (GO), thus resulting in the fluorescence quenching of DNA-AgNCs-peptide conjugate because of Förster resonance energy transfer. Once trypsin had degraded the peptide probe into amino acid residues, the DNA-AgNCs were released from the surface of GO, and the enhanced fluorescence of DNA-AgNCs was restored. Trypsin can be determined with a linear range of 0.0–50.0 ng/mL with a concentration as low as 1 ng/mL. This label-free method is simple and sensitive and has been successfully used for the determination of trypsin in serum. The method can also be modified to detect other proteases.

Thrombin has been implicated in atherosclerotic disease development. However, thrombin activity detection is currently limited because of the lack of convenient fluorescent probes. We developed a label-free fluorescent method to assay thrombin activity on the basis of a designed peptide probe with a thrombin-cleavable peptide sequence and a cysteine terminus. The peptide probe can be conjugated to DNA-templated silver nanoclusters (DNA-AgNCs) through Ag-S bonding; as a result, the fluorescence of DNA-AgNCs was enhanced. As the DNA-AgNCs-peptide conjugate was adsorbed to graphene oxide (GO), the enhanced fluorescence of DNA-AgNCs was quenched. Once the peptide probe was cleaved by thrombin, the resulting release of the DNA-AgNCs from the surface of GO restored the enhanced fluorescence. Thrombin can be determined with a linear range of 0.0-50.0 nM with a detection limit of 1 nM. The thrombin-sensitive probe with a cysteine terminus may be developed into probes to detect other proteases.