A novel ratiometric aptasensor based on SERS for accurate quantification of cardiac troponin I

Cardiac troponin I (cTnI) as a biomarker of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is directly related to myocardial damage. Here, we proposed a ratiometric aptamer-sensor (aptasensor) for quantifying cTnI based on surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), in which the uniform and high-density gold array was decorated with highly specific aptamer Tro4 to form the capture substrate for target cTnI. Firstly, gold array was labeled with 5, 5’-dithio bis-(2-nitrobenzoic acid) (DTNB) as one SERS signal to effectively realize signal self-calibration. In addition, aptamer Tro6 targeting cTnI and 4-mercaptobenzoic acid (4-MBA) as another SERS signal were anchored to porous gold (pAu) to form a pAu signal probe. In the presence of cTnI, the capture substrate and pAu signal probes could build a typical sandwich structure, thus the ratio of SERS peak intensity (I4-MBA/IDTNB) could be used to quantify cTnI. The ratiometric aptasensor showed a good linearity from 0.001 to 100 ng mL−1 and a low detection limit down to 0.27 pg mL−1. Own to dual signal output and the gold array substrate, the aptasensor exhibited good reproducibility, high sensitivity and accuracy. When the aptasensor was applied to the quantification of cTnI in human serum samples, the detection performance was comparable to that of enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), proving that the sensor has a good prospect in the diagnosis of AMI disease.