Truncated Electrochemical Aptasensor with Enhanced Antifouling Capability for Highly Sensitive Serotonin Detection
Biosensors, vol. 13, pp. 881
Abstract
Accurate determination of serotonin (ST) provides insight into neurological processes and enables applications in clinical diagnostics of brain diseases. Herein, we present an electrochemical aptasensor based on truncated DNA aptamers and a polyethylene glycol (PEG) molecule-functionalized sensing interface for highly sensitive and selective ST detection. The truncated aptamers have a small size and adopt a stable stem-loop configuration, which improves the accessibility of the aptamer for the analyte and enhances the sensitivity of the aptasensor. Upon target binding, these aptamers perform a conformational change, leading to a variation in the Faraday current of the redox tag, which was recorded by square wave voltammetry (SWV). Using PEG as blocking molecules minimizes nonspecific adsorption of other interfering molecules and thus endows an enhanced antifouling ability. The proposed electrochemical aptamer sensor showed a wide range of detection lasting from 0.1 nM to 1000 nM with a low limit of detection of 0.14 nM. Owing to the unique properties of aptamer receptors, the aptasensor also exhibits high selectivity and stability. Furthermore, with the reduced unspecific adsorption, assaying of ST in human serum and artificial cerebrospinal fluid (aCSF) showed excellent performance. The reported strategy of utilizing antifouling PEG describes a novel approach to building antifouling aptasensors and holds great potential for neurochemical investigations and clinical diagnosis.
Authors 7
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Forschungszentrum Jülich · RWTH Aachen University
Affiliation as printed
Faculty I, RWTH Aachen University, 52062 Aachen, Germany
Institute of Biological Information Processing, Bioelectronics (IBI-3), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, 52428 Jülich, Germany
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Affiliation as printed
Institute of Biological Information Processing, Bioelectronics (IBI-3), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, 52428 Jülich, Germany
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Affiliation as printed
Institute of Biological Information Processing, Bioelectronics (IBI-3), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, 52428 Jülich, Germany
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Affiliation as printed
Institute of Biological Information Processing, Bioelectronics (IBI-3), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, 52428 Jülich, Germany
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Affiliation as printed
Department of Materials Genome Institute, and Department of Chemistry, College of Science, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200444, China
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Affiliation as printed
Institute of Biological Information Processing, Bioelectronics (IBI-3), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, 52428 Jülich, Germany
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Dirk Mayer corresponding
Affiliation as printed
Institute of Biological Information Processing, Bioelectronics (IBI-3), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, 52428 Jülich, Germany
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