Electrochemiluminescence Immunoassay Platform with Immunoglobulin G-Encapsulated Gold Nanoclusters as a Two-In-One Probe

Biomolecule-functionalized Au nanoclusters (AuNCs) have drawn great interest in the electrochemiluminescence (ECL) field due to their unique optical/electrical properties, biocompatibility, and versatile bioapplication potentials. Herein, we proposed a two-in-one ECL probe of immunoglobulin Gencapsulated AuNCs (IgG-AuNCs) for the development of a highperformance ECL immunoassay (ECLIA) platform. The IgG-AuNCs were not only used as an ECL probe due to their excellent anodic ECL performance with triethylamine (TEA) as a coreactant but also used as the biorecognition element because of their wellretained bioactivity of the IgG. As a proof of concept, a new type of competitive immunosensing platform has been applied to detect IgG representing several merits of facile preparation, rapid detection, sample saving, and good analytical performance. The sensing platform exhibited a linear range of 0.5-50,000 ng/mL with a limit of detection of 0.06 ng/mL for IgG detection with high selectivity. In addition, this convenient ECLIA platform also performed well in real serum sample detection. Notably, our work not only proved the two-in-one immuno-AuNC probe-based ECLIA strategy but also developed a rational framework for study of ECL bioassay platforms based on multifunctional AuNCs and other related nanomaterials.

Automated summary

The study introduced a dual-function ECL probe IgG-AuNCs for the development of a high-performance ECLIA platform. It was successfully applied for IgG detection, demonstrating features such as easy preparation, rapid detection, sample saving, and high selectivity.