Direct electron transfer enhancement of covalently bound tyrosinase to glassy carbon via Woodward's reagent K

Abstract

This work describes the reaction mechanism for chemical modification of tyrosinase by Woodward's Reagent K and its covalent attachment to a glassy carbon electrode. The spectrophotometric studies revealed that the modification does not cause a significant structural change to tyrosinase. The direct electrochemistry of modified enzyme was achieved after immobilization on an oxidatively activated glassy carbon electrode. The enzyme film exhibited a pair of well-defined quasi-revesible voltammetric peaks corresponding to the Cu (II)/Cu (I) redox couple located in the active site of tyrosinase. The formal potential of immobilized enzyme was measured to be 90 mV (vs. Ag/AgCl) in phosphate buffer solution at pH 7.0. The charge-transfer coefficient and apparent heterogeneous electron transfer rate constant were estimated to be 0.5 and 0.9 ± 0.06 s − 1 , respectively. Finally, the electrochemical behavior of the immobilized enzyme in the presence of caffeic acid and L-3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine as substrates was investigated. The amperometric study of biosensor toward L-3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine resulted a linear response in the concentration range from 1.66 × 10 − 6 to 8.5 × 10 − 5 M with detection limit of 9.0 × 10 −5 M and sensitivity of 135 mA μM − 1 cm − 2 .