Abstract
Bioelectronics devices that convert biochemical signals to electronic readout enable biosensing with high spatiotemporal resolution. These technologies have been primarily applied in biomedicine while in plants sensing is mainly based on invasive methods that require tissue sampling, hindering in vivo detection and having poor spatiotemporal resolution. Here we developed enzymatic biosensors based on organic electrochemical transistors, OECTs, for in vivo and real time monitoring of sugar fluctuations in the vascular tissue of trees. The glucose and sucrose OECT-biosensors were implanted into the vascular tissue of trees with minimal disruption of the trees physiological processes and operated through a low-cost portable unit for 48 hours. Our work consists a proof of concept study where implantable OECT-biosensors not only allow real time monitoring of metabolites in plants but also reveal new insights in sugar transport and metabolism. We anticipate that this work will be a starting point for establishing bioelectronic technologies as powerful non-invasive tools for basic plant research and for agriculture and forestry.
Highlights
Bioelectronics enable electronic interfacing with the biological world as means for monitoring or stimulating biological processes
organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs)-based sugar sensors The OECT-based glucose and sucrose sensors were fabricated on a 125-mm-thick polyethylene naphthalate (PEN) substrate using standard microfabrication techniques as described in the Transparent Methods section
In this work, we developed implantable OECT-based enzymatic biosensors that can operate in the complex in vivo environment for 48hr and in real-time monitor sugar variations in the vascular tissue of trees
Summary
Bioelectronics enable electronic interfacing with the biological world as means for monitoring or stimulating biological processes. While the majority of efforts lie within the animal kingdom, applying bioelectronics to other biological organisms has emerged with successful demonstrations of sensing and actuation in bacteria (He et al, 2012; Pitsalidis et al, 2018; Zajdel et al, 2018; Demuru et al, 2019; Di Lauro et al, 2020) and plants (Stavrinidou et al, 2015, 2017; Coppedeet al., 2017; Poxson et al, 2017; Bernacka-Wojcik et al, 2019; Janni et al, 2019; Kim et al, 2019; Vurro et al, 2019; Diacci et al, 2020). The OECT is a three terminal device where a gate electrode modulates the current, via reduction-oxidation switching of a conducting polymer-based channel (Nilsson et al, 2002; Rivnay et al, 2018).
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