Development of an electrochemical maltose biosensor

In this work, electrochemical maltose biosensors based on mutants of the maltose binding protein (MBP) are developed. A ruthenium complex (Ru), which is covalently attached to MBP, serves as an electrochemical reporter of MBP conformational changes. Biosensors were made through direct attachment of Ru complex modified MBP to gold electrode surfaces. The responses of some individual mutants were evaluated using square wave voltammetry. A maltose-dependent change in Faradic current and capacitance was observed. It is therefore demonstrated that biosensors using generically this family of bacterial periplasmic binding proteins (bPBP) can be made lending themselves to facile biorecognition element preparation and low cost electrochemical transduction.