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. 2021 Jun 14;11(6):195.
doi: 10.3390/bios11060195.

Study on a Plasmonic Tilted Fiber Grating-Based Biosensor for Calmodulin Detection

Xiaoyong Chen  1 , Jie Jiang  2 , Nan Zhang  2 , Wenwei Lin  2 , Pin Xu  2 , Jinghua Sun  1
Affiliations

Study on a Plasmonic Tilted Fiber Grating-Based Biosensor for Calmodulin Detection

Xiaoyong Chen et al. Biosensors (Basel). .

Abstract

Tilted fiber Bragg grating, which has the advantages of both fiber Bragg grating and long-period fiber grating, has been widely studied for sensing in many fields, especially in the field of biochemistry. Calmodulin, which has a wide distribution in eukaryotes, can regulate several enzymes such as adenylate cyclase and guanylate cyclase and mediates several cellular processes such as cell proliferation and cyclic nucleotide metabolism. The abnormal levels of calmodulin in the body will result in serious effects from metabolism to nerve growth and memory. Therefore, it is important to measure the calmodulin concentration in the body. In this work, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a plasmonic tilted fiber Bragg grating-based biosensor for calmodulin detection. The biosensor was made using an 18° tilted fiber Bragg grating with a 50 nm-thick gold nanofilm coating the surface of the fiber, and transient receptor potential channels were bonded onto the surface of the gold nanofilm to serve as bio-detectors for calmodulin detection. Experimental results showed that the limit of detection using our biosensor was 0.44 nM. Furthermore, we also demonstrated that the interaction between calmodulin and transient receptor potential channels was quite weak without calcium in the solution, which agrees with the biology. Our proposed biosensor has a simple structure, is easy to manufacture, and is of small size, making it a good choice for real-time, label-free, and microliter-volume biomolecule detection.

Keywords: calmodulin; fiber-optic biosensor; limit of detection; surface plasmonic resonance; tilted fiber Bragg grating.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Detail of the phase-mask technique for TFBG fabrication.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Detail of the proposed sensor.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Block diagram of experimental setup. BBS: broadband source; PC: polarization controller; OC: optical circulator; OSA: optical spectrum analyzer; 2-Ch-MP: 2-channel-micro-pump.
Figure 4
Figure 4
A measured spectrum of the biosensor. Insets (a,b) are, respectively, the responses of the selected cladding mode and core mode when the biosensor was used for measuring CaM at a concentration of 1 μM.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Detection of calmodulin at concentrations of 1 nM (black “□”), 0.2 nM (green “◇”), and 0.1 nM (red “○”) compared with buffer solution without calmodulin (blue “∆”). The intensity changes of the core mode (pink “X”), at 1540 nm, as it varied with time is also shown.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Measured concentrations using the TFBG functionalized with TRP immersed in buffer solution, in the presence or in the absence of CaM.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Interaction monitoring between CaM (10 μM) and TRP channels in solutions with a Ca2+ concentration of 1 mM (labeled “◇”) and without Ca2+ (labeled “○”).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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