Selective fluorescent sensing of α-amanitin in serum using carbon quantum dots-embedded specificity determinant imprinted polymers

alpha-amanitin could make patients die of acute liver failure within a short time if suitable treatment is not provided in a timely fashion. This paper demonstrates a new strategy for direct detection of alpha-amanitin in serum using carbon quantum dots-embedded specificity determinant imprinted polymers. According to the structure of alpha-amanitin, we selected a proper moiety of alpha-amanitin as specificity determinant to synthesize template to prepare the MIPs. The computer simulation was used to screen out acidic methacrylic acid (MAA) and basic 4-vinyl pyridine (4-Vpy) together as functional monomers, and the experiments further proved that synergistic interaction of MAA and 4-Vpy was beneficial to enhance the recognition capability of MIPs for a-amanitin. Moreover, the fluorescence intensity showed good linear correlations with the concentration of alpha-amanitin from 0.05 to 4.0 mu g mL(-1). The detection limit for alpha-amanitin was 15 ng mL(-1). The nanoparticles were employed to directly detect alpha-amanitin in serum without any pretreatment with recoveries of 97.8-100.9%. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.