Nanomaterials based Enzyme mimetic detection assay for the easy, early, sensitive, and selective detection of Tuberculosis

Abstract

Sensors are very important devices for the early detection and monitoring of diseases during their progression and treatments. A long story short, technologies are moving towards optical biosensors as novel sensing devices considering its major advantages as a quick response, high sensitivity, and less complexity. Fluorescence based sensors are one which are 100 to 1000 times more sensitive than any other technique. Fluorescence mechanism is based on measurement of excitation and emission wavelength of absorbed and emitted radiations. Tuberculosis is a lung infection caused by bacteria named as mycobacterium tuberculosis. It is the second most common cause of death with 2 million annual global death rates estimated worldwide. As Tuberculosis doesn’t show any symptom at its latent stage and Enzyme based detection test such as PCR, ELISA tests are time taking with low sensitivity of detection. Our approach is to design the cost-effective nanomaterial-based assay which can monitor the presence of Tuberculosis by the indication of volatile markers of Tb in exhaled breath. Nanotechnology could play a key role in the detection of Tb due to the added advantages it offers such as an easy and cost-effective synthesis with improved morphologies which include high surface area, pore size, better stability as compared to enzymes. So, the nanomaterial-based detection assays are more preferred over enzymes for remote sensing. Therefore, novel graphene oxide based nanocomposites modified with Fe3O4-Co3O4-ZnO nanoparticles, are synthesized using hydrothermal method. The average crystallite size and planes were calculated by XRD, and functional group identification was done using FTIR analysis. Different concentrations of analyte (Mm-M) were observed using fluorescence spectrophotometer to check sensitivity and selectivity of the assay. Hence, the synthesized nanocomposite are shown with high sensitivity and selectivity towards methyl nicotinate volatile organic marker for Tb.