Environmental Toxicology Monitoring with Polyazetidine-based Enzymatic Electrochemical Biosensors

Polyazetidine prepolymer (PAP) has been employed since two decades as immobilizing agent for proteins in biosensors development; some of them are suitable for determination of toxics and pollutants either in inhibition or direct analysis. PAP immobilization procedure is a combination of physical entrapment and chemical cross linking towards several moieties in the proteins; the most interesting features displayed by the obtained layer are the permeability towards both analytes and electrochemical mediators and the formation of an aqueous microenvironment suitable to preserve a native-like structure of immobilized enzymes. Furthermore PAP layer ensure an optimal contact time between the enzyme and the analytes to be determined particularly important for the inhibition based biosensor configuration. Examples of determination of pesticides, herbicides, phycotoxins, biogenic amines and polyphenols with PAP-based biosensors, are described herein.