A highly sensitive colorimetric sensing platform based on silver nanocomposites for alkaline phosphatase

Abstract

Alkaline phosphatase (ALP) plays significant roles in regulating intracellular processes and is an important biomarker connected to several diseases. In this work, one facile and sensitive sensing platform based on CQD-silver nanocomposites (CQD-silver NPs) for colorimetric detection of alkaline phosphatase (ALP) was introduced. ALP triggers the removal of the phosphate group of ascorbic acid 2-phosphate (AA2P), which is then transformed into ascorbic acid (AA). The as-obtained AA can easily cause significant aggregation of monodispersed NPs and cause the system color to turn from bright yellow to gray. Based on the color change of the ratio of 490 nm/630 nm, ALP was sensitively and selectively detected. Under the optimum, the established method showed linearity for ALP in the range of 0.1–50 U L⁻¹ and the detection limit was low at 0.035 U L⁻¹, and it was subjected to ALP inhibitor screening from goji berry extract. These results indicated that the colorimetric system can be used as a simple tool for visual and fast evaluation of ALP activity as well as providing an alternative to screen ALP inhibitors.