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Electrochemical tyrosine-click bioconjugation enables multiplexed cytokine sensing and immunoprofiling in native serum

Nature Communications 2026
Kaixin Song, Yinghuan Liu, Qijia Ma, Chunjing Liang, Lanqun Mao, Ying Jiang

Summary

Researchers developed an electrochemical tyrosine-click bioconjugation strategy for rapidly attaching proteins to electrode surfaces in under three minutes, then applied it to multiplexed cytokine sensing in serum and in vivo immunoprofiling of nanoplastic-exposed animals, revealing charge-dependent inflammatory cytokine signatures.

Polymers
Body Systems
Study Type In vivo

Electrochemical biosensors require robust, well-controlled biointerfaces, but existing protein immobilization chemistries are slow and poorly defined. Here we report an interfacial electrochemical tyrosine-click (i-eY-Click) strategy that enables rapid (<3 min), chemoselective covalent attachment of native proteins under physiological conditions. At mild potentials (+0.36 V vs Ag/AgCl), electrode-grafted 4-phenylurazole is oxidized in situ to phenyltriazolinedione intermediates that react specifically with tyrosine residues, without genetic modification or soluble catalysts. i-eY-Click displays ~20-fold faster kinetics than conventional amide coupling while preserving protein activity. Implemented on carbon microelectrode arrays, it yields well-controlled antibody monolayers and supports multiplexed cytokine sensing in native serum with markedly improved sensitivity, detection limits and reproducibility. We further use this platform for in vivo serum immunoprofiling in a nanoplastic exposure model, revealing charge-dependent cytokine signatures and delayed inflammatory responses to polylactic acid particles. i-eY-Click thus provides a general, chemistry-driven route to high-performance biointerfaces for multiplexed immunosensing and biomarker profiling.

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