The spread of antibiotic resistance in pathogenic bacteria has become one of the major concerns to public health. Improved monitoring of drug resistance is of high importance for infectious disease control. One of the major mechanisms for bacteria to overcome treatment of antibiotics is the production of β-lactamases, which are enzymes that hydrolyze the β-lactam ring of the antibiotic. In this study, we have developed a self-immobilizing and fluorogenic probe for the detection of β-lactamase activity. This fluorogenic reagent, upon activation by β-lactamases, turns on a fluorescence signal and, more importantly, generates a covalent linkage to the target enzymes or the nearby proteins. The covalent labeling of enzymes was confirmed by SDS-PAGE analysis and MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry. The utility of this structurally simple probe was further confirmed by the fluorescent labeling of a range of β-lactamase-expressing bacteria.

Metallo-β-lactamase is one of the major clinical threats because this β-lactam-hydrolyzing enzyme confers significant resistance to most β-lactam antibiotics, including carbapenems, among bacterial pathogens. Reported herein is a novel fluorogenic sensor for the specific detection of metallo-β-lactamase activities. This carbapenem-based reagent exhibits excellent selectivity to metallo-β-lactamase over other serine-β-lactamases, including serine carbapenemases. The usefulness of this probe was further demonstrated in the rapid identification of metallo-β-lactamase-expressing pathogenic bacteria.