Competitive method for fluorescent dopamine detection in cerebrospinal fluid based on the peroxidase-like activity of ficin

Dopamine (DA), a catecholamine neurotransmitter , is considered to be an important indicator for mental diseases detection in the clinic. In this study, a novel fluorescent sensing platform consisting of the ficin-H 2 O 2 -tyramine system for determining DA in cerebrospinal fluids (CSF) was established. The proposed method is based on the fact that ficin, a mimetic peroxidase , can catalyze H 2 O 2 decomposition into OH radicals, which can oxidize non-fluorescent tyramine into fluorescent dityramine. When DA was introduced, DA can compete with tyramine for OH and resulting in the oxidation reaction of tyramine inhibited along with the fluorescence intensity of the system decreased, which provides a unique strategy for fluorescence detection of DA. Under optimal conditions, the fluorescence intensity decreased linearly with the DA level over a wide concentration range from 0.05 to 12.0 μM (R 2  = 0.995) with a detection limit of 46 nM (3σ/k). More importantly, the proposed sensing approach exhibits high sensitivity, good selectivity and has been successfully applied to DA sensing in complex biological samples, which made it hold great potential for DA determination in chemical and biological analytical applications.