Bacterial cellulose composites for target analyte preconcentration in analytical applications

Abstract

Bacterial cellulose (BC) is a well-known natural material with desirable properties including biocompatibility, biodegradability, hydrophilicity, high mechanical strength, high porosity, and broad chemically modifiable capacity. Herein, we incorporate carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) in BC hydrogel to improve the swelling property and prevent collapsing of 3D bacterial cellulose network upon drying. In addition, gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) were successfully embedded within the BC/CMC composite using in situ chemical reduction. Moreover, AuNPs were uniformly distributed in BC/CMC matrix with a diameter of approximately 13 nm. The freeze-dried BC/CMC/AuNPs composite was subsequently used for adsorption of targeted analytes for laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry. In particular, AuNPs can act as the selective capture probes for thiol-containing compounds, such as glutathione (GSH) that is an important biomarker of some diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cancer, aging and heart problem. BC/CMC/AuNPs composite showed the high sensitivity towards GSH detection with a linear range of 50 – 10,000 nM and a limit of detection as low as 54.1 nM, which is promising for distinguishing between normal and Alzheimer’s patients.