Investigations about surface energy transfer radius (r
0) are limited to the aqueous solution system,
and it
is quite limited on experimental values of r
0 between dyes and the corresponding gold particle (AuNP) sizes,
especially for living cell systems. Hence, the selection of suitable
AuNP-dye pairs is restricted when designing nanometal surface energy
transfer (NSET) strategies in analytical sciences. Here, we developed
a single-nucleobase-resolved NSET strategy to in situ measure the r
0 value between a specific
dye and different-sized AuNPs on the living cell membrane. Using the
aptamer-dye complex (XQ-2d-nTA-FAM) and antiCD71
antibody-coupled AuNP conjugate (Au@antiCD71) as two working elements
to bind two different sites on CD71 receptors on living cell membranes,
we modified the nTA spacer between FAM and the terminal
of aptamer to change the distance (r) from FAM to
AuNP center and further adjusted the quenching efficiency (Φ)
between them. Different r
0 values of various
AuNP-FAM pairs in living cells are determined by this in situ detection strategy. Based on this single-nucleobase-resolved NSET
strategy, we established a simple and efficient universal method for
measuring r
0 in the living cell system,
which greatly expanded the selection range of AuNP-dye pairs during
the construction of the NSET model at the nanoscale.