Harnessing glycofluoroforms for impedimetric biosensing.

Glycans play a major role in biological cell-cell recognition and signal transduction but have found limited application in biosensors due to glycan/lectin promiscuity; multiple proteins are capable of binding to the same native glycan. Here, site-specific fluorination is used to introduce protein-glycan selectivity, and this is coupled with an electrochemical detection method to generate a novel biosensor platform. 3F-lacto--biose glycofluoroform is installed onto polymer tethers, which are subsequently immobilised onto gold screen printed electrodes, providing a non-fouling surface.