Selective fluorescent sensing of α-amanitin in serum using carbon quantum dots-embedded specificity determinant imprinted polymers

α-amanitin could make patients die of acute liver failure within a short time if suitable treatment is not provided in a timely fashion. This paper demonstrates a new strategy for direct detection of α-amanitin in serum using carbon quantum dots-embedded specificity determinant imprinted polymers. According to the structure of α-amanitin, we selected a proper moiety of α-amanitin as specificity determinant to synthesize template to prepare the MIPs. The computer simulation was used to screen out acidic methacrylic acid (MAA) and basic 4-vinyl pyridine (4-Vpy) together as functional monomers, and the experiments further proved that synergistic interaction of MAA and 4-Vpy was beneficial to enhance the recognition capability of MIPs for α-amanitin. Moreover, the fluorescence intensity showed good linear correlations with the concentration of α-amanitin from 0.05 to 4.0 μg mL−1. The detection limit for α-amanitin was 15 ng mL−1. The nanoparticles were employed to directly detect α-amanitin in serum without any pretreatment with recoveries of 97.8-100.9%.