Determination of Pesticides Using Electrochemical Enzymatic Biosensors

Abstract

In the recent decade numerous biosensing methods for detection of pesticides have been developed using integrated enzymatic biosensors and immunosensors. Enzymatic determination of pesticides is most often based on inhibition of the activity of selected enzymes such as cholinesterases, organophosphate hydrolase, alkaline and acid phosphatase, ascorbate oxidase, acetolactate synthase and aldehyde dehydrogenase. Enzymatic biosensors were developed using various electrochemical signal transducers, different methods of enzyme immobilization and various measuring methodologies. Application of single-use screen-printed biosensors in batch measurements and flow-injection analysis with enzyme biosensors are most intensively developed procedures. An improvement of detectability level can be achieved by the use of recombinant enzyme mutants, while multi-component determinations by the use of biosensor matrices and data processing with artificial neural networks. In some cases the determined pesticide can be also a substrate of enzymatic reaction. Another area of development of biosensors for determination of pesticides is in the design of microbial biosensors and photosystem-based biosensors with electrochemical biosensors.