An Automated Electrochemistry Platform for Accelerating the Characterization of Enzymatic Electrochemistry

Enzymatic electrochemistry harnesses the selectivity of enzymes to enable electrochemical applications spanning sensing, synthesis, and energy conversion. However, the sequential nature of electroanalytical experiments limits throughput, restricting the scale at which enzyme-electrode systems can be screened. Here we demonstrate the capabilities of an automated electrochemistry platform, eLab, to increase the throughput of enzymatic electrochemistry investigations. We used the eLab to collect over 10,000 cyclic voltammograms across a large parameter space consisting of two enzyme variants (promiscuous and wild-type glucose oxidase), 20 saccharide substrates, 21 concentrations, and four scan rates, with measurements being made all in triplicate. The expansive dataset enabled rapid identification of apparent outlier behavior of wild-type glucose oxidase toward glucose, which was confirmed to arise from oxygen sensitivity through targeted manual experiments. The promiscuous variant showed negligible oxygen sensitivity, a critical advantage for applications, such as enzymatic sensors, bioelectrosynthesis, and biofuel cells. Overall, this work demonstrates how automation can be applied to accelerate discovery in bioelectrochemistry.