Biodevices and Nano-Electronics of Cell Group, Department of Electronic Devices Circuits and Architectures, Polytechnic University of Bucharest, Splaiul Independentei 313, 060042 Bucharest, Romania.
EduSciArt SRL, Iovita 2, 050686 Bucharest, Romania.
Biosensors (Basel). 2023 Aug 11;13(8):806. doi: 10.3390/bios13080806.
Neurotransmitters are an important category of substances used inside the nervous system, whose detection with biosensors has been seriously addressed in the last decades. Dopamine, a neurotransmitter from the catecholamine family, was recently discovered to have implications for cardiac arrest or muscle contractions. In addition to having many other neuro-psychiatric implications, dopamine can be detected in blood, urine, and sweat. This review highlights the importance of biosensors as influential tools for dopamine recognition. The first part of this article is related to an introduction to biosensors for neurotransmitters, with a focus on dopamine. The regular methods in their detection are expensive and require high expertise personnel. A major direction of evolution of these biosensors has expanded with the integration of active biological materials suitable for molecular recognition near electronic devices. Secondly, for dopamine in particular, the miniaturized biosensors offer excellent sensitivity and specificity and offer cheaper detection than conventional spectrometry, while their linear detection ranges from the last years fall exactly on the clinical intervals. Thirdly, the applications of novel nanomaterials and biomaterials to these biosensors are discussed. Older generations, metabolism-based or enzymatic biosensors, could not detect concentrations below the micro-molar range. But new generations of biosensors combine aptamer receptors and organic electrochemical transistors, OECTs, as transducers. They have pushed the detection limit to the pico-molar and even femto-molar ranges, which fully correspond to the usual ranges of clinical detection of human dopamine in body humors that cover 0.1 ÷ 10 nM. In addition, if ten years ago the use of natural dopamine receptors on cell membranes seemed impossible for biosensors, the actual technology allows co-integrate transistors and vesicles with natural receptors of dopamine, like G protein-coupled receptors. The technology is still complicated, but the uni-molecular detection selectivity is promising.
神经递质是神经系统中使用的一类重要物质，生物传感器在过去几十年中已经被广泛用于检测神经递质。多巴胺是儿茶酚胺家族的一种神经递质，最近被发现与心脏骤停或肌肉收缩有关。除了具有许多其他神经精神方面的影响外，多巴胺还可以在血液、尿液和汗液中被检测到。本文综述了生物传感器作为多巴胺识别的重要工具的重要性。本文的第一部分介绍了生物传感器在神经递质检测方面的应用，重点介绍了多巴胺。常规的检测方法昂贵且需要专业知识。这些生物传感器的一个主要发展方向是将适合电子设备附近分子识别的活性生物材料集成在一起。其次，特别是对于多巴胺，微型生物传感器具有出色的灵敏度和特异性，并且比传统光谱法更便宜，而近年来其线性检测范围正好落在临床区间内。第三，讨论了新型纳米材料和生物材料在这些生物传感器中的应用。基于代谢或酶的生物传感器等旧一代技术无法检测到低于微摩尔范围的浓度。但是新一代的生物传感器将适体受体和有机电化学晶体管（OECT）结合起来作为换能器。它们将检测限推至皮摩尔甚至飞摩尔范围，这完全对应于人体多巴胺在体液中的临床检测常用范围，覆盖 0.1 到 10 nM。此外，如果十年前细胞膜上的天然多巴胺受体在生物传感器中似乎是不可能的，那么实际技术现在允许晶体管和囊泡与天然多巴胺受体（如 G 蛋白偶联受体）共同集成。该技术仍然很复杂，但单分子检测的选择性很有前途。
