Micro-capillary-based self-referencing surface plasmon resonance biosensor for determination of transferrin

Temperature-compensated fiber-optic SPR microfluidic sensor based on micro-nano 3D printing

The current temperature-compensated fiber-optic surface plasmon resonance (SPR) biosensors are mainly open-ended outside the sensing structure, and there is a lack of temperature compensation schemes in fiber-optic microfluidic chips. In this paper, we proposed a temperature-compensated optical fiber SPR microfluidic sensor based on micro-nano 3D printing. Through the optical fiber micro-machining technology, the two sensing areas were designed on both sides of the same sensing fiber. The wavelength division multiplexing technology was used to collect the sensing light signals of the two sensing areas at the same time. The specific measurement of berberine and the detection of ambient temperature in the optical fiber SPR biological microfluidic channel were realized, and the temperature compensation matrix relationship was constructed, and then the temperature compensation was realized when measuring berberine biomolecules. Experiments have shown that the temperature sensitivity of the optical fiber SPR microfluidic sensor was 2.18 nm/°C, the sensitivity of the detection of berberine was 0.2646 nm/(µg/ml), the detection limit (LOD) was 0.38 µg/ml, and in a mixed solution showed an excellent specific detection impact.

A L-glutamine binding protein modified MNM structured optical fiber biosensor based on surface plasmon resonance sensing for detection of L-glutamine metabolism in vitro embryo culture

A surface plasmon resonance (SPR) optical fiber sensor with multimode-coreless-multimode (MNM) structure was developed, which modified by L-glutamine-binding protein (QBP) for detection of L-glutamine (Gln). The QBP was immobilized on the surface of gold films by chemical cross-linking and exhibited a binding affinity for L-glutamine. The conformation of QBP can be changed from the "open" to the "closed", which led to a red-shift of the SPR peak when QBP bounded to L-glutamine. There was a good linear correlation between is a dependence of the SPR peak on and the concentration of L-glutamine concentration in the range 10-100 μM, with a sensitivity of 10.797nm/log10[Gln] for L-glutamine in the in vitro embryo culture (IVC) medium environment, and the limit of detection (LOD) is 1.187 μM. This QBP-modified MNM structure optical fiber SPR sensor provides a new idea for the developmental potential assessment of embryos in the process of in vitro embryo culture.

The comparison between light-scattering detectors based on LED and photodiode for immunoprecipitation assays of transferrin and ferritin

Undoubtedly, light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and photodiodes (PDs) are indispensable optoelectronic devices in modern analytical chemistry. LEDs can serve as either light emitters or detectors, thus being an alternative to the most popular detection systems consisted of PD. In this contribution, a comparison between LED-LED and LED-PD detectors, operating in turbidimetric and nephelometric modes, has been carried out for immunoprecipitation detection of transferrin and ferritin. The greatest emphasis was placed on the study of detectors responses under different measurement conditions including current powering an emitter, amplification gain in the case of PD as detector or the construction of detection cells designed for the Multicommutated Flow Analysis (MCFA). The assumption was to obtain the fully-mechanized system with simple but efficient detection system to enable the determination of iron-binding proteins occurring at different concentration ranges in human body. As a result, the optimized arrangements of LED-LED and LED-PD setups were characterized by similar analytical characteristics, enabling the determination of transferrin with the detection limit (LOD) of 0.2 mg/L and RSDs of 2.8-4.8% for LED-LED, and LOD of 0.1 mg/L and RSDs of 0.9-3.6% for LED-PD. In the case of ferritin detection, only the response of the LED-PD detector was statistically distinguishable in the range of 130-198 μg/L of protein with recorded analytical signal change of 20 mV value. The addition of polymer for signal enhancement provided the increase of response range to 107-253 μg/L, enabling the developed system for detection of pathological serum ferritin levels.

Improved method for estimating adlayer thickness and bulk RI change for gold nanocrescent sensors

This paper presents a novel method employing the maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) technique alongside a nonlinear sensor response model to improve and extract more quantitative sensing results for localized surface plasmon resonance biosensors. The nonlinear response model treats the sensor response as a nonlinear function of the biomolecular adlayer thickness. This method makes use of the multiple resonance characteristic of nanocrescent structures in order to estimate the adlayer thickness and bulk refractive index (RI) change. Nanoimprint lithography is used here to fabricate the nanostructures. The finite element method (FEM) is used to model the nanocrescents and numerically validate the nonlinear-MLE method. Comparing to the established linear model, the proposed nonlinear-MLE method achieves 75% improvement in the limit of detection based on the estimated adlayer thickness and improves the bulk RI resolution by two orders of magnitude.