Clicking Hydrazine and Aldehyde: The Way to Labeling of Viruses with Quantum Dots.

Real-time tracking of fluorophore-tagged viruses in living cells can help uncover virus infection mechanisms. Certainly, the indispensable prerequisite for virus-tracking is to label viruses with some bright and photostable beacons such as quantum dots (QDs) via an appropriate labeling strategy. Herein, we devise a convenient hydrazine-aldehyde based strategy to label viruses with QDs through the conjugation of 4-formylbenzoate (4FB) modified QDs to 6-hydrazinonicotinate acetone hydrazone (HyNic) modified viruses under mild conditions. On the basis of this strategy, viruses can be successfully labeled with QDs with high selectivity, stable conjugation, good reproducibility, high labeling efficiency of 92-93% and maximum retention of both fluorescence properties of QDs and infectivity of viruses, which is very meaningful to tracking and statistical analysis of virus infection processes. By further comparing with the most widely used labeling strategy based on the Biotin-SA system, this new strategy has advantages of both high labeling efficiency and good retention of virus infectivity, thus offering a promising alternative for virus-labeling. Moreover, due to the ubiquitous presence of exposed amino groups on the surface of various viruses, this selective, efficient, reproducible and biofriendly strategy should have good universality for labeling both enveloped and nonenveloped viruses.

Stable isotope labeling assisted liquid chromatography-electrospray tandem mass spectrometry for quantitative analysis of endogenous gibberellins.

In the current study, we developed a stable isotope labeling strategy for the absolute quantification of gibberellins (GAs) by high performance liquid chromatography-electrospray tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-ESI-MS/MS). N,N-dimethyl ethylenediamine (DMED) and its deuterated counterpart d(4)-DMED were used to derivatize GAs extracted from plant tissue samples and GA standards respectively. The both derivatives of GAs were mixed and then subjected to HPLC-ESI-MS/MS analysis. The absolute quantification of GAs in plant tissues could be achieved by calculating the peak area ratios of DMED labeled GAs/d(4)-DMED labeled GAs. In the proposed strategy, the derivatization reaction of the labeling reagents with GAs could be completed rapidly (within 5 min) with high efficiency (>99%) under mild conditions. The resulting derivatives could produce specific fragments in collision induced dissociation (CID), leading to high selectivity in multiple-reaction monitoring (MRM) mode, thus enhanced the reliability of the LC-MS/MS method. Furthermore, the limits of quantitation (LOQs) of GAs were considerably decreased (2-32 folds) due to incorporating easily ionized moieties into GAs, and the quantification of GAs in plant tissue could be achieved without isotopically labeled GA standards. Good linearity was obtained with correlation coefficients R(2) values of >0.99. The limits of detection (LODs) and quantitation (LOQs) ranged from 0.02 to 0.74 pg and 0.07 to 2.45 pg, respectively. Eleven GAs could be successfully determined in spiked sample with 72-128% recoveries and the relative standard deviations (RSDs) were between 1.0% and 13.9%. Finally, the developed method was successfully applied for the detection of GAs in 50mg (fresh weight) Oryza sativa leaves.