Enzyme-Assisted Metal-Organic Framework Sensing System for Diethylstilbestrol Detection

As novel fluorescent-sensing materials, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have shown great potential in environmental monitoring. However, most of the researches are limited to traditional pollutants, whereas the application of MOFs to the detection of the pollutants with more complicated structures, such as endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), has rarely been explored. The difficulties faced in the sensing of EDCs include their electronic stability and the structural similarity among homologues, which could be overcome by the incorporation of enzymatic reaction. In this work, the first example of enzyme-assisted MOF-fluorescent-sensing was developed for the analysis of diethylstilbestrol (DES, a synthetic estrogen). In this system, DES is first oxidized by HRP/H2O2 quantitatively to its quinone form, and then the quinone product is selectively captured by a stilbene based luminescent MOF to induce fluorescence response. By the tandem sensitization and filtration of enzymatic reaction and MOF adsorption, this method shows high sensitivity (DL = 89nm) and can distinguish DES from other similar-structured EDCs.