Electrochemical biosensor for cytokinins based on the CHASE domain of Arabidopsis histidine kinases 4

Abstract In this study, An AHK4 CHASE domain was used to construct an electrochemical cytokinin biosensor using ferrocene as the electrochemical mediator. Upon addition of cytokinin, the binding of cytokinin and AHK4 led to dimerization, which blocked electron transfer between ferrocene and the electrode, and the redox peak current of ferrocene was gradually reduced. Cytokinin was detected by recording the change of the ferrocene redox peak current. The biosensor shows a linear range of 50–400 nM with a linear regression equation of ip = 0.0086c + 0.732 (R2 = 0.993) with ip in μA and c in nM and a detection limit (LOD) of 1.5 nM (S/N = 3). The biosensor exhibits excellent performance that avoids interference of other types of plant hormones and was successfully applied to the detection of cytokinins in bean sprouts.