Simple detection of gluten in wheat-containing food samples of celiac diets with a novel fluorescent nanosensor made of folic acid-based carbon dots through molecularly imprinted technique.

A nanosensor is designed for rapid detection of the gluten content of wheat-containing samples. Gluten is a plant protein that causes allergy in individuals and leads to celiac disease. Since in a celiac diet trace amounts of gluten are able to prompt allergic reactions, a food-allergen label must be provided on foodstuffs and be seriously considered by food industries. Various analytical methods and commercial immunoassays are used for such analyses but prices per test, especially for low-income countries are high. Thus, a rapid, sensitive, simple, and inexpensive detecting tool seems essential. A solution can be designing a gluten optical nanosensor. The nanosensor is made of folic-acid-carbon dots and gluten molecularly templates embedded simultaneously in a silicate matrix. Adding gluten to the solution of this nanostructure and its adsorbing on the blank templated space on the nanostructure causes fluorescence enhancement. The concentration range of gluten detection was 0.36 to 2.20 µM.

A theoretical study on interactions between mitoxantrone as an anticancer drug and DNA: application in drug design.

This research is an effort to further understand the physicochemical interaction between the novel drug, mitoxantrone (MTX) and its biologic receptor, DNA. The ultimate goal is to design drugs that interact more with DNA. Understanding the physicochemical properties of the drug as well as the mechanism by which it interacts with DNA, it should ultimately allow the rational design of novel anti-cancer or anti-viral drugs. Molecular modelling on the complex formed between MTX and DNA presented that this complex was indeed fully capable of participating in the formation of a stable intercalation site. Furthermore, the molecular geometries of MTX and the DNA bases (adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine) were optimized with the aid of the B3LYP/6-31G* method. The properties of the isolated intercalator and its stacking interactions with the adenine...thymine (AT) and guanine...cytosine (GC) nucleic acid base pairs were studied with the DFTB method (density functional tight-binding), an approximate version of the DFT method, that was extended to cover the London dispersion energy. The B3LYP/6-31G* stabilization energies of the intercalator...base pair complexes were found 10.06 kcal/mol and 21.64 kcal/mol for AT...MTX and GC...MTX, respectively. It was concluded that the dispersion energy and the electrostatic interaction contributed to the stability of the intercalator.DNA base pair complexes. The results concluded from the comparison of the DFTB method and the Hartree-fock method point out that these methods show close results and support each other.