Nanobiosensors exploiting specific interactions between an enzyme and herbicides in atomic force spectroscopy.

The development of sensitive methodologies for detecting agrochemicals has become important in recent years due to the increasingly indiscriminate use of these substances. In this context, nanosensors based on atomic force microscopy (AFM) tips are useful because they provide higher sensitivity with operation at the nanometer scale. In this paper we exploit specific interactions between AFM tips functionalized with the enzyme acetolactate synthase (ALS) to detect the ALS-inhibitor herbicides metsulfuron-methyl and imazaquin. Using atomic force spectroscopy (AFS) we could measure the adhesion force between tip and substrate, which was considerably higher when the ALS-functionalized tip (nanobiosensor) was employed. The increase was approximately 250% and 160% for metsulfuron-methyl and imazaquin, respectively, in comparison to unfunctionalized probes. We estimated the specific enzyme-herbicide force by assuming that the measured force comprises an adhesion force according to the Johnson-Kendall-Roberts (JKR) model, the capillary force and the specific force. We show that the specific, biorecognition force plays a crucial role in the higher sensitivity of the nanobiosensor, thus opening the way for the design of similarly engineered tips for detecting herbicides and other analytes.