The study of electrochemical behavior of bioactive molecules has become one of the most rapidly developing scientific fields. Biotechnology and biomedical engineering fields have a vested interest in constructing more precise and accurate voltammetric/amperometric biosensors. One rapidly growing area of biosensor design involves incorporation of carbon-based nanomaterials in working electrodes, such as one-dimensional carbon nanotubes, two-dimensional graphene, and graphene oxide. In this review article, we give a brief overview describing the voltammetric techniques and how these techniques are applied in biosensing, as well as the details surrounding important biosensing concepts of sensitivity and limits of detection. Building on these important concepts, we show how the sensitivity and limit of detection can be tuned by including carbon-based nanomaterials in the fabrication of biosensors. The sensing of biomolecules including glucose, dopamine, proteins, enzymes, uric acid, DNA, RNA, and H2O2 traditionally employs enzymes in detection; however, these enzymes denature easily, and as such, enzymeless methods are highly desired. Here we draw an important distinction between enzymeless and enzyme-containing carbon-nanomaterial-based biosensors. The review ends with an outlook of future concepts that can be employed in biosensor fabrication, as well as limitations of already proposed materials and how such sensing can be enhanced. As such, this review can act as a roadmap to guide researchers toward concepts that can be employed in the design of next generation biosensors, while also highlighting the current advancements in the field.

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acsnano.5b05690

Engineered Carbon-Nanomaterial-Based Electrochemical Sensors for Biomolecules

Squaraine Compounds: Tailored Design and Synthesis towards a Variety of Material Science Applications

Effect of gold nanoparticle morphology on adsorbed protein structure and function.

Biopolymer-coated liposomes by electrostatic adsorption of chitosan (chitosomes) as novel delivery systems for carotenoids

https://www.cell.com/biophysj/pdf/S0006-3495(07)71266-3.pdf

Binding of Lysozyme to Phospholipid Bilayers: Evidence for Protein Aggregation upon Membrane Association

http://gorbenko-h.univer.kharkov.ua/publ_pdf/2005_Ioffe_BC.pdf

Lysozyme effect on structural state of model membranes as revealed by pyrene excimerization studies.

The present study was undertaken to evaluate the sensitivity of newly synthesized squaraine dye 1 to the changes in lipid bilayer physical properties and compared it with the well-known dye 2. Partitioning of the dye 1 into lipid bilayer was found to be followed by significant increase of its fluorescence intensity and red-shift of emission maximum, while intensity of the dye 2 fluorescence increased only slightly on going from aqueous to lipidic environment. This suggests that dye 1 is more sensitive to the changes in membrane properties as compared to dye 2. Partition coefficients of the dye 1 have been determined for the model membranes composed of zwitterionic phospholipid phosphatidylcholine (PC) and its mixtures with positively charged detergent cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB), anionic phospholipid cardiolipin (CL), and sterol (Chol). The spectral responses of the dye 1 in different liposome media proved to correlate with the increase of bilayer polarity induced by Chol and CL or its decrease caused by CTAB. It was concluded that dye 1 can be used as fluorescent probe for examining membrane-related processes.

http://gorbenko-h.univer.kharkov.ua/publ_pdf/2006_Ioffe_JOF1.pdf

A new fluorescent squaraine probe for the measurement of membrane polarity.

http://gorbenko-h.univer.kharkov.ua/publ_pdf/2007_Ioffe_BC.pdf

Valeriya M. Ioffe

Papers

Binding of Lysozyme to Phospholipid Bilayers: Evidence for Protein Aggregation upon Membrane Association

Lysozyme effect on structural state of model membranes as revealed by pyrene excimerization studies.

A new fluorescent squaraine probe for the measurement of membrane polarity.

Fluorescence study of protein-lipid complexes with a new symmetric squarylium probe.

Resonance energy transfer study of lysozyme-lipid interactions.