Ultrasensitive voltammetric determination of kanamycin using a target-triggered cascade enzymatic recycling couple along with DNAzyme amplification

Electrochemical Sensors for Antibiotic Detection: A Focused Review with a Brief Overview of Commercial Technologies

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) poses a significant threat to global health, powered by pathogens that become increasingly proficient at withstanding antibiotic treatments. This review introduces the factors contributing to antimicrobial resistance (AMR), highlighting the presence of antibiotics in different environmental and biological matrices as a significant contributor to the resistance. It emphasizes the urgent need for robust and effective detection methods to identify these substances and mitigate their impact on AMR. Traditional techniques, such as liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) and immunoassays, are discussed alongside their limitations. The review underscores the emerging role of biosensors as promising alternatives for antibiotic detection, with a particular focus on electrochemical biosensors. Therefore, the manuscript extensively explores the principles and various types of electrochemical biosensors, elucidating their advantages, including high sensitivity, rapid response, and potential for point-of-care applications. Moreover, the manuscript investigates recent advances in materials used to fabricate electrochemical platforms for antibiotic detection, such as aptamers and molecularly imprinted polymers, highlighting their role in enhancing sensor performance and selectivity. This review culminates with an evaluation and summary of commercially available and spin-off sensors for antibiotic detection, emphasizing their versatility and portability. By explaining the landscape, role, and future outlook of electrochemical biosensors in antibiotic detection, this review provides insights into the ongoing efforts to combat the escalating threat of AMR effectively.

Electrochemical Aptasensors for Antibiotics Detection: Recent Achievements and Applications for Monitoring Food Safety

Antibiotics are often used in human and veterinary medicine for the treatment of bacterial diseases. However, extensive use of antibiotics in agriculture can result in the contamination of common food staples such as milk. Consumption of contaminated products can cause serious illness and a rise in antibiotic resistance. Conventional methods of antibiotics detection such are microbiological assays chromatographic and mass spectroscopy methods are sensitive; however, they require qualified personnel, expensive instruments, and sample pretreatment. Biosensor technology can overcome these drawbacks. This review is focused on the recent achievements in the electrochemical biosensors based on nucleic acid aptamers for antibiotic detection. A brief explanation of conventional methods of antibiotic detection is also provided. The methods of the aptamer selection are explained, together with the approach used for the improvement of aptamer affinity by post-SELEX modification and computer modeling. The substantial focus of this review is on the explanation of the principles of the electrochemical detection of antibiotics by aptasensors and on recent achievements in the development of electrochemical aptasensors. The current trends and problems in practical applications of aptasensors are also discussed.

Electrochemical methods for the determination of antibiotic residues in milk: A critical review

Several antibiotics have been applied to veterinary medicine due to their broad-spectrum of antibacterial activity and prophylactic power. Residues of these antibiotics can be accumulated in dairy cattle, in addition to promoting contamination of the environment and, in more serious cases, in milk, causing a public health problem. Different regulatory agencies establish maximum residue limits for these antibiotics in milk, so it becomes important to develop sensitive analytical methods for monitoring these compounds. Electrochemical techniques are important analytical tools in analytical chemistry because they present low cost, simplicity, high sensitivity, and adequate analytical frequency (sample throughput) for routine analyses. In this sense, this review summarizes the state of the art of the main electrochemical sensors and biosensors, instrumental techniques, and sample preparation used for the development of analytical methods, published in the last five years, for the monitoring of different classes of antibiotics: aminoglycosides, amphenicols, beta-lactams, fluoroquinolones, sulfonamides, and tetracyclines, in milk samples. The different strategies to develop electrochemical sensors and biosensors are critically compared considering their analytical features. The mechanisms of electrochemical oxidation/reduction of the antibiotics are revised and discussed considering strategies to improve the selectivity of the method. In addition, current challenges and future prospects are discussed.

Contribution of Nanomaterials to the Development of Electrochemical Aptasensors for the Detection of Antimicrobial Residues in Food Products

The detection of antimicrobial residues in food products of animal origin is of utmost importance. Indeed antimicrobial residues could be present in animal derived food products because of animal treatments for curative purposes or from illegal use. The usual screening methods to detect antimicrobial residues in food are microbiological, immunological or physico-chemical methods. The development of biosensors to propose sensitive, cheap and quick alternatives to classical methods is constantly increasing. Aptasensors are one of the major trends proposed in the literature, in parallel with the development of immunosensors based on antibodies. The characteristics of electrochemical sensors (i.e., low cost, miniaturization, and portable instrumentation) make them very good candidates to develop screening methods for antimicrobial residues in food products. This review will focus on the recent advances in the development of electrochemical aptasensors for the detection of antimicrobial residues in food products. The contribution of nanomaterials to improve the performance characteristics of electrochemical aptasensors (e.g., Sensitivity, easiness, stability) in the last ten years, as well as signal amplification techniques will be highlighted.

Efficient strand displacement amplification via stepwise movement of a bipedal DNA walker on an electrode surface for ultrasensitive detection of antibiotics

DNA walkers, one of the artificial molecular machines which are constructed via smart synthetic DNA, have attracted rapidly growing attention from researchers in the biosensing field. In this work, we design an Exonuclease III (Exo III)-aided target-aptamer binding recycling (ETBR) activated bipedal DNA machine for highly sensitive electrochemical detection of antibiotics. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that a bipedal DNA machine has been applied in electrochemical sensing for antibiotics. On the one hand, the bipedal DNA walker exceeds the conventional single swing arm DNA walker in terms of walking efficiency and stability. On the other hand, the ETBR strategy, along with efficient strand displacement amplification via stepwise movement of a bipedal DNA walker significantly promotes the signal amplification efficiency. Under optimal conditions, this bipedal DNA machine possesses a detection limit of 7.1 fM within a linear detection range from 10 fM to 100 pM. Moreover, this electrochemical biosensor is expected to detect a wide variety of analytes using the corresponding target recognition probes. Thus, our proposed strategy offers a highly efficient, stable and practical platform for small molecule analysis.

A label-free electrochemical platform for the detection of antibiotics based on cascade enzymatic amplification coupled with a split G-quadruplex DNAzyme

Herein, a split G-quadruplex DNAzyme as a signal reporter was integrated into an electrochemical sensing platform for the detection of antibiotics with specificity and sensitivity. To improve the signal-to-noise ratio, two G-rich oligonucleotide sequences (G1 and G2) were blocked into two different hairpin probes, preventing the two segments from assembling into a spilt G-quadruplex structure. Moreover, we designed a double-arch probe, consisting of an aptamer as the recognition element and two-step enzymatic signal amplification. Concretely, the first is the Nt.BbvCI-assisted nicking cyclic reaction activated by target-aptamer binding, and the second is exonuclease III-aided cyclic amplification for generating abundant G1 and G2. The modified capture probe on the electrode was used to combine G1 and G2 to form the spilt G-quadruplex/hemin when K+ and hemin were present. This complex plays the role of DNAzyme with superior horseradish peroxidase activity in catalyzing the decomposition of H2O2. Under optimal conditions, this biosensor showed an excellent performance for sensing kanamycin with a detection limit of 83 fM for kanamycin concentrations ranging from 100 fM to 1 nM. Hence, the proposed strategy has potential as an efficient and actual platform for small molecule analysis.

Electrochemical lead(II) biosensor by using an ion-dependent split DNAzyme and a template-free DNA extension reaction for signal amplification

A voltammetric biosensor for lead(II) (Pb²⁺) is described that is based on signal amplification by using an ion-dependent split DNAzyme and template-free DNA extension reaction. The Pb²⁺-dependent split DNAzyme was assembled on gold nanoparticles (Au@Fe₃O₄), and this nanoprobe then was exposed to Pb²⁺ which causes the split-off of DNAzymes to release primers containing 3'-OH groups (S₁ and S₂). The template-free DNA extension reaction triggers the generation of long ssDNA nanotails, which then can bind the free redox probe N,N'-bis(2-(trimethylammonium iodide)propylene)perylene-3,4,9,10-tetracarboxyldiimide (PDA⁺) via electrostatic adsorption. Hence, the concentration of PDA⁺ in solution is reduced. Therefore, less free PDA⁺ can be immobilized on a glassy carbon electrode modified with electrodeposited gold nanoparticles (depAu) to produce an electrochemical signal, typically measured at ∼0.38 V (vs. SCE) for quantitation of Pb²⁺. The use of a Pb²⁺-dependent split DNAzyme avoids the usage of a proteinic enzyme. It also increases the sensitivity of the sensor which has a lower detection limit of 30 pM of Pb²⁺. Graphical abstract Novel electrochemical biosensor based on the amplification of ion-dependent split DNAzyme and template-free DNA extension reaction for trace detection of Pb²⁺.

Voltammetric Techniques for the Analysis of Drugs using Nanomaterials based Chemically Modified Electrodes

Background:

Electroanalytical techniques play a very important role in the areas of medicinal, clinical as well as pharmaceutical research. Amongst these techniques, the voltammetric methods for the determination of drugs using nanomaterials based chemically modified electrodes (CMEs) have received enormous attention in recent years. This is due to the sensitivity and selectivity they provide on qualitative as well as quantitative aspects of the electroactive analyte under study. The aim of the present review was to discuss the work on nanomaterials based CMEs for the analysis of drugs covering the period from 2000 to present employing various voltammetric techniques for different classes of the drugs.

Methods:

The present review deals with the determination of different classes of drugs including analgesics, anthelmentic, anti-TB, cardiovascular, antipsychotics and anti-allergic, antibiotic and gastrointestinal drugs. Also, a special section is devoted for enantioanalysis of certain chiral drugs using voltammetry. The detailed information of the voltammetric determination for the drugs from each class employing various techniques such as differential pulse voltammetry, cyclic voltammetry, linear sweep voltammetry, square wave voltammetry, stripping voltammetry, etc. are presented in tabular form below the description of each class in the review.

Results:

Various nanomaterials including carbon nanotubes, graphene, carbon nanofibers, quantum dots, metal/metal oxide nanoparticles, polymer based nanocomposites have been used by researchers for the development of CMEs over a period of time. The large surface area to volume ratio, high conductivity, electrocatalytic activity and biocompatibility make them ideal modifiers where they produce synergistic effect which helps in trace level determination of pharmaceutical, biomedical and medicinal compounds. In addition, macrocyclic compounds as chiral selectors have been used for the determination of enantiomeric drugs where one of the isomers captured in the cavities of chiral selector shows stronger binding interaction for one of the enantiomorphs.

Conclusion:

arious kinds of functional nanocomposites have led to the manipulation of peak potential due to drug - nanoparticles interaction at the modified electrode surface. This has facilitated the simultaneous determination of drugs with almost similar peak potentials. Also, it leads to the enhancement in voltammetric response of the analytes. It is expected that such modified electrodes can be easily miniaturized and used as portable, wearable and user friendly devices. This will pave a way for in-vivo onsite real monitoring of single as well as multi component pharmaceutical compounds.

Aptamer biorecognition-triggered DNAzyme liberation and Exo III-assisted target recycling for ultrasensitive homogeneous colorimetric bioassay of kanamycin antibiotic

A novel peroxidase-mimicking DNAzyme-based colorimetric homogenous bioassay is developed for kanamycin detection. Aptamer biorecognition triggers DNAzyme liberation from DNA duplexes for "off-on" signal transduction. The special hairpin structure of the aptamer-kanamycin biocomposite enables Exo III-assisted target recycling for signal amplification.

Impedimetric aptasensor for kanamycin by using carbon nanotubes modified with MoSe2 nanoflowers and gold nanoparticles as signal amplifiers

An aptamer based impedimetric method is described for the determination of kanamycin. A hydrothermal route was applied to synthesize molybdenum selenide nanoflowers (MoSe₂) which are promising materials for use in sensing interfaces due to their high specific surface and excellent electrical conductivity. Carbon nanotubes were then decorated with the MoSe₂ nanoflowers and gold nanoparticles (AuNP/CNT/MoSe₂) and placed on a glassy carbon electrode to serve as a signal amplifier. An amino-terminal kanamycin-specific aptamer was covalently linked to carboxy groups of acid-oxidized CNTs on the electrode to act as the signalling probe. The various steps during the construction of the modified electrode were monitored by scanning electron microscopy, wavelength-dispersive and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, and cyclic voltammetry. The change in electrochemical signal was quantified by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, typically at a working voltage of 0.22 V vs. Ag/AgCl. The calibration plot is linear in the 1 pM-0.1 nM and 100 nM-10 μM kanamycin concentration range and has a 0.28 pM detection limit. The assay is outstandingly selective, sensitive, stable and reproducible. Graphical abstract ᅟ.

Ultrasensitive amperometric aptasensor for the epithelial cell adhesion molecule by using target-driven toehold-mediated DNA recycling amplification

An amperometric aptasensor is reported for the electrochemical determination of the epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM). It is based on a combination of EpCAM-driven toehold-mediated DNA recycling amplification, the specific recognition of EpCAM aptamer, and its binding to EpCAM. Hairpin probe 1 (Hp1) with a toehold region was modified with a 5'-thiol group (5'-SH) and self-assembled onto the surface of a gold electrode. Upon addition of EpCAM, the probe A (a 15-mer) is liberated from the aptamer/probe A complex and then hybridizes with the toehold domain of Hp1. This results in the exposure of another toehold for further hybridizing with hairpin probe 2 (Hp2) to displace probe A in the presence of Hp2 that was labeled with the electrochemical probe Methylene Blue (MB). Subsequently, liberated probe A is hybridized again with another Hp1 to start the next round of DNA recycling amplification by reusing probe A. This leads to the formation of plenty of MB-labeled DNA strands on the electrode surface and generates an amplified current. This 1:N probe-response amplification results in ultrasensitive and specific detection of EpCAM, with a 20 pg·mL^-1 detection limit. The electrode is highly stable and regenerable. It was successfully applied to the determination of EpCAM in spiked human serum, urine and saliva, and thus provides a promising tool for early clinical diagnosis. Graphical abstract Schematic illustration of the electrochemical detection for EpCAM. The method is based on aptamer-based recognition and EpCAM-driven toehold-mediated DNA recycling amplification. Hp1: Hairpin probe 1; Hp2: Hairpin probe 2; MB: Methylene blue; MCH: 6-Mercapto-1-hexanol; EpCAM: Epithelial cell adhesion molecule.

Target-activated cascaded digestion amplification of exonuclease III aided signal-on and ultrasensitive fluorescence detection of ATP

In this work, a rapid, one-step and ultrasensitive signal-on fluorescence sensing for the detection of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) based on target-activated cascaded digestion amplification with Exo III aid was developed.

Aptamer based voltammetric determination of ampicillin using a single-stranded DNA binding protein and DNA functionalized gold nanoparticles

An aptamer based method is described for the electrochemical determination of ampicillin. It is based on the use of DNA aptamer, DNA functionalized gold nanoparticles (DNA-AuNPs), and single-stranded DNA binding protein (ssDNA-BP). When the aptamer hybridizes with the target DNA on the AuNPs, the ssDNA-BP is captured on the electrode surface via its specific interaction with ss-DNA. This results in a decreased electrochemical signal of the redox probe Fe(CN)₆^3- which is measured best at a voltage of 0.188 mV (vs. reference electrode). In the presence of ampicillin, the formation of aptamer-ampicillin conjugate blocks the further immobilization of DNA-AuNPs and ssDNA-BP, and this leads to an increased response. The method has a linear reposne that convers the 1 pM to 5 nM ampicillin concentration range, with a 0.38 pM detection limit (at an S/N ratio of 3). The assay is selective, stable and reproducible. It was applied to the determination of ampicillin in spiked milk samples where it gave recoveries ranging from 95.5 to 105.5%. Graphical abstract Schematic of a simple and sensitive electrochemical apta-biosensor for ampicillin detection. It is based on the use of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs), DNA aptamer, DNA functionalized AuNPs (DNA-AuNPs), and single-strand DNA binding protein (SSBP).