Volume 136, Issue 17 e202400766
Forschungsartikel

A Universal and Programmable Platform based on Fluorescent Peptide-Conjugated Probes for Detection of Proteins in Organelles of Living Cells

Dr. Xia Wu

Dr. Xia Wu

State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology, Faculty of Materials Science and Chemistry, China University of Geosciences, 430074 Wuhan, China

These authors contributed equally to this work.

Contribution: Conceptualization (lead), Data curation (lead), Formal analysis (lead), Funding acquisition (supporting), Writing - original draft (lead)

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Dr. Jing-Jing Hu

Dr. Jing-Jing Hu

State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology, Faculty of Materials Science and Chemistry, China University of Geosciences, 430074 Wuhan, China

These authors contributed equally to this work.

Contribution: Conceptualization (supporting), Funding acquisition (equal), Writing - review & editing (lead)

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Dr. Chong Duan

Dr. Chong Duan

State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology, Faculty of Materials Science and Chemistry, China University of Geosciences, 430074 Wuhan, China

Contribution: Data curation (supporting), Formal analysis (supporting)

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Dr. Rui Liu

Dr. Rui Liu

State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology, Faculty of Materials Science and Chemistry, China University of Geosciences, 430074 Wuhan, China

Contribution: Data curation (supporting)

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Prof. Fan Xia

Prof. Fan Xia

State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology, Faculty of Materials Science and Chemistry, China University of Geosciences, 430074 Wuhan, China

Contribution: Conceptualization (lead), Funding acquisition (lead), Supervision (lead), Writing - review & editing (lead)

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Prof. Xiaoding Lou

Corresponding Author

Prof. Xiaoding Lou

State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology, Faculty of Materials Science and Chemistry, China University of Geosciences, 430074 Wuhan, China

Contribution: Conceptualization (lead), Funding acquisition (lead), Supervision (equal), Writing - review & editing (equal)

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First published: 04 March 2024
Citations: 1

Abstract

Realizing protein analysis in organelles of living cells is of great significance for developing diagnostic and therapeutic methods of diseases. Fluorescent-labeled antibodies with well imaging performance and high affinity are classical biochemical tools for protein analysis, while due to the inability to effectively enter into cells, not to mention organelles and the uncontrollable reaction sites that might cause antibodies inactivation when chemically modification, they are hard to apply to living cells. Inspired by the structure of fluorescent-labeled antibodies, we designed as a universal detection platform that was based on the peptide-conjugated probes (PCPs) and consisted of three parts: a) a rotor type fluorescent molecular scaffold for conjugation and signal output; b) the cell penetration protein recognition unit; c) the subcellular organelle targeting unit. In living cells, PCPs could firstly localize at organelles and then proceed protein specific recognition, thus jointly leading to the restriction of twisted intramolecular charge transfer and activation of fluorescence signal. As a proof-of-concept, six different proteins in three typical intracellular organelles could be detected by our platform through simply replacing the recognition sequence of proteins and matching organelle targeting units. The position and intensity of fluorescence signals demonstrated specificity of PCPs and universality of the platform.

Conflict of interests

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available in the supplementary material of this article.

The full text of this article hosted at iucr.org is unavailable due to technical difficulties.