Discrimination of enantiomers based on LSPR biosensors fabricated with weak enantioselective and nonselective receptors

Chiral recognition based on enantioselective sensors is superior to conventional chromatographic enantioseparation techniques in terms of simplicity and rapidity. Normally, highly specific enantioselective receptors are used for the fabrication of enantioselective sensors. However, to date there only limited number of highly specific chiral selectors are reported, which greatly confines the development of enantioselective sensors. Herein, we demonstrate the feasibility of using relatively weak chiral selectors to construct an enantioselective biosensor for accurate chiral discrimination of enantiomers. The detection of racemic mixture of ( R )- and ( S )-1,2,3,4-Tetrahydro-1-naphthylamine (TNA) was demonstrated as an example. The sensor was made up of a dual-channel microfluidic chip. One channel of the chip was modified with human serum albumin (HSA), which was reported to be a weak chiral selector for TNA; while the other channel was modified with a monoclonal anti-TNA antibody, which was a non-enantioselective TNA receptor. A portable localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) detection system was integrated with the microfluidic chip to accomplish the signal collection. Our investigation revealed that the combination of LSPR responses obtained from the two channels can be used for quantitative discrimination of the ( R )- and ( S )-TNA. The limit of detection was found to be 150 nM for ( R )-TNA and 100 nM for ( S )-TNA. The feasibility of use relatively weak chiral selectors could potentially promote the development of various enantioselective sensors.