Direct electron transfer enhancement of covalently bound tyrosinase to glassy carbon via Woodward's reagent K.

This work describes the reaction mechanism for chemical modification of tyrosinase by Woodward's Reagent K and its covalent attachment to a glassy carbon electrode. The spectrophotometric studies revealed that the modification does not cause a significant structural change to tyrosinase. The direct electrochemistry of modified enzyme was achieved after immobilization on an oxidatively activated glassy carbon electrode. The enzyme film exhibited a pair of well-defined quasi-revesible voltammetric peaks corresponding to the Cu (II)/Cu (I) redox couple located in the active site of tyrosinase. The formal potential of immobilized enzyme was measured to be 90mV (vs. Ag/AgCl) in phosphate buffer solution at pH 7.0. The charge-transfer coefficient and apparent heterogeneous electron transfer rate constant were estimated to be 0.5 and 0.9±0.06s(-1), respectively. Finally, the electrochemical behavior of the immobilized enzyme in the presence of caffeic acid and L-3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine as substrates was investigated. The amperometric study of biosensor toward L-3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine resulted a linear response in the concentration range from 1.66×10(-6) to 8.5×10(-5)M with detection limit of 9.0×10(-5)M and sensitivity of 135mAμM(-1)cm(-2).