Abstract
Herein, we describe a Janus micromotor smartphone platform for the motion-based detection of glutathione. The system compromises a universal three-dimensional (3D)-printed platform to hold a commercial smartphone, which is equipped with an external magnification optical lens (20–400×) directly attached to the camera, an adjustable sample holder to accommodate a glass slide, and a light-emitting diode (LED) source. The presence of glutathione in peroxide-rich sample media results in the decrease in the speed of 20 μm graphene-wrapped/PtNPs Janus micromotors due to poisoning of the catalytic layer by a thiol bond formation. The speed can be correlated with the concentration of glutathione, achieving a limit of detection of 0.90 μM, with percent recoveries and excellent selectivity under the presence of interfering amino acids and proteins. Naked-eye visualization of the speed decrease allows for the design of a test strip for fast glutathione detection (30 s), avoiding previous amplification strategies or sample preparation steps. The concept can be extended to other micromotor approaches relying on fluorescence or colorimetric detection for future multiplexed schemes.
Highlights
Fast biomarker detection is essential for personalized healthcare and rapid disease treatment
We have reported here a smartphone portable device based on micromotors for the naked-eye detection of clinical relevance biomarkers for future decentralized analysis and use in remote settings
While Janus micromotors are used here to illustrate the concept, the strategy can be extended to other designs such as wires, tubular, etc
Summary
Fast biomarker detection is essential for personalized healthcare and rapid disease treatment. The detection principle consisted of (1) sample application in the reservoir of the microchip for loop-mediated isothermal amplification of the nucleic acid of HIV-1; (2) mixing of resulting amplicons with the DNA-modified micromotors; and (3) detection of the motion of the resulting assemblies in peroxide solutions. The presence of HIV-1 generates large amplicons that reduce the motion/speed of motors (turn-off) Such a decrease is used as the analytical signal for HIV detection at a concentration as low as 1000 virus particles mL−1 with high specificity within an hour.[31] The same design but in a turn-on configuration was applied for Zika virus detection. The system relies on the direct coupling of a high-performance commercial optical scope with the smartphone camera, allowing for the real-time observation of 20 μm graphene (GO)-wrapped/PtNPs Janus micromotor motion (see Figure 1A). The samples were fortified with 3, 25, and 160 μM of GSH
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