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Real-Time Tunable Dynamic Range for Calibration-Free Biomolecular Measurements with a Temperature-Modulated
Zhi-Min Chen1, Qi Mou1, Sheng-Hong Wu1
1Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Analytical Science of Food Safety and Biology, Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Analysis and Detection Technology for Food Safety, College of Chemistry, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou 350108, Fujian, China.
Temperature-modulated electrochemical aptamer-based sensors offer a dynamically adjustable detection window for real-time monitoring of biomolecular concentrations in biological fluids. This innovation overcomes the limited dynamic range of current biosensors, enabling accurate analysis of significant concentration changes in unprocessed samples.
Area of Science:
- Biomedical Engineering
- Analytical Chemistry
- Biosensor Technology
Background:
- Real-time monitoring of molecular analytes in biological fluids is crucial for personalized healthcare and clinical diagnosis.
- Current biosensing platforms face challenges with limited dynamic range, hindering real-time analysis of multi-order magnitude concentration variations.
- Existing technologies struggle to accurately quantify analytes across a wide concentration spectrum in complex biological samples.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop a novel biosensing approach with an extended dynamic range for real-time monitoring of biomolecular concentrations.
- To introduce temperature modulation as a method to dynamically adjust the calibration-free detection window of electrochemical aptamer-based sensors.
- To enable accurate, continuous, and reagent-less detection of analytes in unprocessed biological fluids.
Main Methods:
- Utilized temperature-modulated electrochemical aptamer-based sensors with an actively heated and cooled electrode surface.
- Implemented dual-frequency calibration-free measurements at varying interface temperatures to dynamically adjust the detection window.
- Applied the sensor architecture to analyze procaine in urine, and adenosine triphosphate and adenosine in serum, without sample pre-treatment.
Main Results:
- Achieved a significantly extended calibration-free detection window, from 25 to 2500 μM for procaine, 1 to 500 μM for ATP, and 5 to 2000 μM for adenosine.
- Demonstrated continuous, real-time, and accurate response to several-hundredfold target concentration changes in undiluted biological samples.
- Validated the temperature modulation method's effectiveness in flowing systems, overcoming ambient temperature limitations.
Conclusions:
- Temperature-modulated electrochemical aptamer-based sensors provide a breakthrough in extending the dynamic range of biosensors.
- This novel sensor architecture enables robust, real-time quantification of analytes across a wide concentration spectrum in complex biological matrices.
- The developed technology significantly expands the capabilities of continuous, reagent-less biosensing for advanced healthcare applications.
