Sensitive analysis of glutathione in bacteria and HaCaT cells by polydopamine/gold nanoparticle-coated microchip electrophoresis via online pre-concentration of field-amplified sample stacking

In this paper, polydopamine/gold nanoparticles (PDA/Au NPs) were used to construct a functional film on a glass microfluidic channel surface in microchip electrophoresis (MCE) for the separation of reduced glutathione (GSH) and oxidized glutathione (GSSH). The formation of the PDA/Au NPs was characterized by scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscope, UV–Vis spectra and ATR-FTIR. An online pre-concentration strategy involving field-amplified sample stacking was used to determine the sensitivity of the assay for measuring GSH and GSSH in bacteria (Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus and Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium) and HaCaT cells samples by MCE with laser-induced fluorescence detection. The influences of the separation voltage, the concentration of the running buffer and the pH value of running buffer, were carefully investigated. Using this studied method, GSH and GSSH could be simultaneously pre-concentrated and separated within 70 s. The limits of detection of GSH and GSSH were as low as 0.81 and 0.91 nM, respectively (S/N = 3), which corresponded to approximately 180–301-fold improvements in peak height. Moreover, this method was successfully applied to the analysis of bacteria (E. coli, S. aureus and S. typhimurium) and HaCaT cell samples with a satisfactory recovery rate.