Dual recognition unit strategy improves the specificity of the adenosine triphosphate (ATP) aptamer biosensor for cerebral ATP assay.

Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) aptamer has been widely used as a recognition unit for biosensor development; however, its relatively poor specificity toward ATP against adenosine-5'-diphosphate (ADP) and adenosine-5'-monophosphate (AMP) essentially limits the application of the biosensors in real systems, especially in the complex cerebral system. In this study, for the first time, we demonstrate a dual recognition unit strategy (DRUS) to construct a highly selective and sensitive ATP biosensor by combining the recognition ability of aptamer toward A nucleobase and of polyimidazolium toward phosphate. The biosensors are constructed by first confining the polyimidazolium onto a gold surface by surface-initiated atom transfer radical polymerization (SI-ATRP), and then the aptamer onto electrode surface by electrostatic self-assembly to form dual-recognition-unit-functionalized electrodes. The constructed biosensor based on DRUS not only shows an ultrahigh sensitivity toward ATP with a detection limit down to the subattomole level but also an ultrahigh selectivity toward ATP without interference from ADP and AMP. The constructed biosensor is used for selective and sensitive sensing of the extracellular ATP in the cerebral system by combining in vivo microdialysis and can be used as a promising neurotechnology to probing cerebral ATP concentration.