Development Of Luminescent Sensor Arrays And Their Applications In Biomolecule Analysis

With the development of life science and growth of living standards, there is awidely requirement for fast response, sensitive, high-throughput, and miniaturizedsensors in the areas of bioanalytical chemistry and medical diagnosis. As an artificialolfactory system based on optical signals, optical sensor arrays can meet thisrequirement and analyze complex samples efficiently because multiple responseinformation, including luminescent intensity, wavelength and life time, can be collectedfrom different sensing elements simultaneously. In our present work, we improved ordeveloped four kinds of luminescent sensor arrays to address the current limitations ofsensor arrays, such as irreversible response and unsatisfied sensitivity anddiscrimination power. We also applied these techniques to biomolecule detection andidentification of cell lines and bacterial biofilms. The main contents of the presentdissertation are as follows:1. A pneumatic spray device was coupled with the nanomaterial-basedcataluminescent sensor array to convert solution samples to aerosols. The aerosols couldgenerate distinct cataluminescence responses like gas samples so that detection of14kinds of small biomolecules including saccharides and amino acids and discriminationof beverages were achieved.2. We found that the catalytic assistance of nanomaterials could not only enhancethe thermochemiluminescence of biomolecules but also offer multidimensionalresponses due to the diversity of nanomaterials’ catalytic activity. Accordingly, wedeveloped a nanomaterial-assistant TCL sensor array to perform protein sensing andcell discrimination. Notably, nanomaterials, as solid catalysts, barely loss during thesensing process so that this sensor array offers the advantage of reversible and stableresponse and long life time.3. Plasmon-enhanced fluorescence was used to amplify signals and improvesensitivity of array-based sensing. We found that the fluorescence of gold nanoclusterssynthesized by five protein scaffolds were enhanced about20folds by plasmonicsubstrates and the presence of protein analytes distinctly changed the emission due tothe diverse interactions between gold nanoclusters and protein analytes. Therefore, we construted a fluorescent gold nanocluster sensor array on plasmonic substrates to obtainfluorescence “fingerprints” for protein sensing with satisfied sensitivity.4. We developed a triple-channel fluorescent sensor using functionalizedgold nanoparticles and three fluorescent proteins to perform bacterial biofilmsidentification. Bacterial biofilms formed from six types of bacteria includingtwo hospital isolates were successfully identified. What’s more, we identifiedbacteria and3T3cells co-cultures with good accuracy, indicating the greatapplication potential of this rapid and efficient approach in infection-relatedmedical diagnosis.