A Biomimetic Cardiomyocyte-based Biosensor for the Detection of Medium Chain Fatty Acids

Biomimetic cell-based biosensors have been developed for applications in many fields such as food, beverage, pharmaceutical and environment safety. However, the limited sensitivity and specificity have hampered their further development and practical applications. In recent years, biomimetic biosensors based on the combination of biomaterials as sensitive materials and various detection device as transducers have been widely proposed for the purpose of bridging the gap between the electronic system and the biological sense of smell. In this work, a biomimetic biosensor based on SD primary cardiomyocytes as the main sensitive element and microelectrode array (MEA) as the transducer device was developed for medium-chain fatty acid (MCFA) detection for the first time. The extracted primary cardiomyocytes endogenously expressing the OR51 E 1 olfactory receptor were cultured on the MEA surface and formed syncytium for potential conduction and mechanical beating. The obtained results indicated that the surface coating of MEA chip provided good biocompatibility for cardiomyocyte culture which grow well on the surface of MEA chip, allowing for the further measurement on cell responsive signals. The measurement results showed that this biomimetic biosensor had specific responses to five fatty acids with significant responsive signals and different fatty acid odorants were successfully distinguished by principal component analysis (PCA). The cardiomyocyte-based biosensor developed in this work provides a new method for biomimetic biosensor construction and has promising applications in olfactory detection and pharmaceutical researches.