Fluorescence Enhancement Method for Aptamer-Templated Silver Nanoclusters and Its Application in the Construction of a β-Amyloid Oligomer Sensor

DNA-templated silver nanoclusters (DNA-AgNCs) have attracted significant attention due to their unique fluorescence properties. However, so far, the relatively low quantum yields of the DNA-AgNCs and the complex design of DNA-AgNC-based sensors have limited their application in biosensing or bioimaging. Herein, we report a novel fluorescence enhancement method. The β-Amyloid Oligomer (AβO) aptamer (AptAβO) with A10/T10 at its 3' end can be directly used as the template to fabricate the AgNCs. When the AgNCs were hybridized with the complementary strand that has 12 bases suspended at its 3' terminal, being the same or complementary to the A/T at the 3' end of the AptAβO, and two-base mismatches in the complementary region of the aptamer excluded A10/T10, a dramatic fluorescence enhancement (maximum: ∼500-fold; maximum quantum yield: 31.5%) can be realized. The fluorescence enhancement should result from the aggregation-induced emission of the AgNCs, which can be attributed to forming the reticular structure of the hybridized product. To some extent, the method developed in this work is extendable. The fluorescence enhancement was also realized from the thrombin aptamer-templated AgNCs through designing the aptamer and the corresponding complementary strand according to the method. Based on the fluorescence enhancement of the AptAβO-templated AgNCs, an "on-off" fluorescence sensor was constructed for the sensitive and selective detection of AβO. This work provides a rational strategy to realize fluorescence enhancement for the aptamer-templated AgNCs and design an aptamer-based fluorescence sensor.