Peptide-templated multifunctional nanoprobe for feasible electrochemical assay of intracellular kinase

Protein kinases play a critical role in regulation of intracellular signal transduction, whose aberrant expression is closely associated with various dangerous human diseases. In this paper, we propose a feasible electrochemical assay of intracellular kinase by incorporating peptide nanoprobe-assisted signal labeling and signal amplification. Protein kinase A (PKA)-specific peptide P1 is self-assembled on the surface of a gold electrode, serine of which could be phosphorylated with catalysis of PKA in the presence of adenosine-5'-triphosphate (ATP). Another artificial peptide P2 contains a short template for preparation of copper nanoparticles-based nanoprobe (P2-CuNPs) and provides arginine residues for specific recognition of phosphorylation site. After PKA-catalyzed phosphorylation, phosphorylated P1 specially binds with P2-CuNPs through ultra-stable phosphate-guanidine interaction, and thus results in amplified electrochemical response from surface-attached CuNPs. Our method demonstrates a satisfactory sensitivity toward PKA detection with a detection limit of 0.0019 U/mL, which is also successfully applied in intracellular PKA assay and inhibitory study with high specificity comparable to ELISA. Therefore, the facile method suggests a promising potential use in kinase-related biochemical fundamental research, disease diagnosis and drug discovery in the future.