A general excimer signaling approach for aptamer sensors

Simple, fast and direct analysis or monitoring of significant molecules in complex biological samples is important for many biological study, clinical diagnosis and forensic investigations. Herein we highlight a general method to tailor aptamer sequence into functional subunits to design target-induced light-switching excimer sensors for rapid, sensitive and selective detection of important molecules in complex biological fluids. Our approach is to split one single strand aptamer into two pieces and each terminally labeled with a pyrene molecule while maintaining their binding affinity to target molecules. In the presence of target molecules, two aptamer fragments are induced to self-assemble to form aptamer–target complex and bring two pyrene molecules into a close proximity to form an excimer, resulting in fluorescent switching from ∼400 nm to 485 nm. With an anti-cocaine sensor, as low as 1 μM of cocaine can be detected using steady-state fluorescence assays and more importantly low picomole level of target can be directly visualized with naked eyes. Because the excimer has a long fluorescence lifetime, time-resolved measurements were used to directly detect as low as 5 μM cocaine in urine samples quantitatively without any sample pretreatment.