Ultrasensitive determination of α-glucosidase activity using CoOOH nanozymes and its application to inhibitor screening

Abstract

In this work, a novel method for the colorimetric sensing of α-glucosidase (α-Glu) activity was developed based on CoOOH nanoflakes (NFs), which exhibit efficient oxidase-mimicking activity. Colorless 3,3′,5,5′-tetramethylbenzidine (TMB) can be oxidized by CoOOH NFs into blue-colored oxidized TMB (oxTMB) in the absence of H₂O₂. L-Ascorbic acid-2-O-α-D-glucopyranose (AAG) can be hydrolysed by α-glucosidase to produce ascorbic acid, resulting in a significant decrease of catalytic activity of CoOOH NFs. Thus, a colorimetric α-glucosidase activity detection method was designed with a limit of detection of 0.0048 U mL⁻¹. Furthermore, the designed sensing platform exhibits favorable applicability for the α-glucosidase (α-Glu) activity assay in real samples. Meanwhile, this method can be expanded to study the inhibitors of α-Glu. Finally, the as-proposed method combined with a smartphone would be a color recognizer, which was successfully applied for the determination of α-Glu activity in human serum samples.