Qianni Guo1, Qingbin Zeng1, Weiping Jiang1, Xiaoxiao Zhang1, Qing Luo1, and Xin Zhou1
Mercury contamination is widespread and arises from a
variety of natural sources.We propose the use of hyperpolarized 129Xe
nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy for the sensitive detection of Hg2+
ions in aqueous solution.We develop a biosensor whose molecular structure is
like a clamp. When interact with Hg2+ in aqueous solution, the
molecular structure of the biosensor could be changed as a clamp from “open” to
“closed”. This molecular structure change causes the distance between the two
cryptophane cages of the biosensor become closer, and the electron cloud of
them overlapped. As a result, comparing with normal downfield chemical shifts
of the reported xenon biosensors formetallic ions, the Xe caged in the
cryptophane moiety shows a upfield chemical shift change from 66.5 ppm to 66.1
ppm.
Images were obtained using
a CSI method preciously used for clinical MRI.
