Abstract
Herein, we firstly demonstrate the design and the proof-of-concept use of a capillary-driven surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS)-based microfluidic chip for abrin detection. The micropillar array substrate was etched and coated with a gold film by microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) process to integrate into a lateral flow test strip. The detection of abrin solutions of various concentrations was performed by the as-prepared microfluidic chip. It was shown that the correlation between the abrin concentration and SERS signal was found to be linear within the range of 0.1 ng/mL to 1 μg/mL with a limit of detection of 0.1 ng/mL. Our microfluidic chip design enhanced the operability of SERS-based immunodiagnostic techniques, significantly reducing the complication and cost of preparation as compared to previous SERS-based works. Meanwhile, this design proved the superiority to conventional lateral flow test strips in respect of both sensitivity and quantitation and showed great potential in the diagnosis and treatment for abrin poisoning as well as on-site screening of abrin-spiked materials.
Highlights
Ricin has caught the public's attention by the toxin-tainted letters sent to US President Barack Obama, Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker, and a Mississippi justice official, while abrin, its 70 times more toxic analogue, is less known to the general public
Characterization of natural abrin and anti-abrin antibody Abrin consists of two subunits which are linked by a disulfide bond between Cys247 of the A subunit and Cys8 of the B subunit [2]
The extraction of natural abrin with high purity is the key in production of polyclonal antibody, which determines the quality of induced antibody
Summary
Ricin has caught the public's attention by the toxin-tainted letters sent to US President Barack Obama, Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker, and a Mississippi justice official, while abrin, its 70 times more toxic analogue, is less known to the general public. Abrin and ricin are toxic proteins with similar structure and properties, both of which are classified as category B select agents by the US Health and Human Services [1]. Abrin is much more poisonous with an estimated human fatal dose of 0.1~1.0 μg/kg [2]. There are reported deaths on account of intentional poisoning, most cases occur in children by unintentional ingestion [3]. The major symptoms of abrin poisoning may occur in less than 6 h, and the deaths in children dying of ingestion of one or more abrin seeds have been documented in literature [4]. A fast, readily available confirmatory testing will greatly facilitate the timely diagnosis and treatment for abrin poisoning
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