Detection of parathion pesticide by quartz crystal microbalance functionalized with UV-activated antibodies

Photonic immobilization technique (PIT) has been used to develop an immunosensor for the detection of parathion. An antibody solution has been activated by breaking the disulfide bridge in the triad Trp/Cys-Cys through absorption of ultrashort UV laser pulses. The free thiol groups so produced interact with gold lamina making the antibody oriented upside, that is, with its variable parts exposed to the environment, thereby greatly increasing the detection efficiency. PIT has been applied to anchor polyclonal antiparathion antibodies to the gold electrode of a Quartz Crystal Microbalance (QCM) giving rise to very high detection sensitivity once the parathion is made heavier by complexion with BSA (bovine serum albumin), this latter step only required by the mass based transducer used in this case. The comparison of the sensor response with irradiated antibodies against different analytes shows that the high degree of antibody specificity is not affected by PIT nor is it by the complexion of parathion with BSA. These results pave the way to important applications in biosensing, since the widespread occurrence of the Trp/Cys-Cys residues triads in proteins make our procedure very general and effective to detect light analytes.