Ultrasensitive electrochemiluminescence detection of thrombin based on aptamer and cystamine modified gold nanoparticle probe

Recently, our group showed that one can detect specific oligonucleotides at low femtomolar levels with the electrochemiluminescence (ECL) biobarcode approach based on tris-(2, 2'-bipyridyl) ruthenium (TBR)-labeled cysteamine. It would be a significant advance to use the cysteamine assisted ECL biobarcode assay to detect protein targets in addition to DNA targets. Taking advantage of sandwich binding of two affinity aptamers for increased specificity, TBR-cysteamine as biobarcode for signal amplification and magnetic beads based ECL technology for rapid detection, a promising assay for thrombin quantification is developed. The sandwich complex could be selectively captured by micromagnetic particles and then quantified by ECL signals. Current cysteamine-Gold nanoparticle (GNP) conjugates based ECL biobarcode assay is expected to become a powerful tool for protein analysis.