Comparative study of thermal stability of magnetostrictive biosensor between two kinds of biorecognition elements

• Phage immobilized biosensors has much better thermal stability.
• The longevity of phage immobilized biosensors was longer than 30 days even at 65 °C.
• The activation energy of phage immobilized biosensors is much higher.

Magnetostrictive biosensors specific to Salmonella typhimurium were prepared by immobilizing antibody or phage as biorecognition elements onto the magnetostrictive sensor platform. The sensors were stored at temperatures of 25 °C (room temperature), 45 °C and 65 °C, respectively, and the ability to bind S. typhimurium was detected by testing the resonant frequency shift using a HP network analyzer after exposure to 1 mL of 1 × 109 cfu/mL of S. typhimurium at a predetermined schedule. The binding of S. typhimurium to biosensors was confirmed by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). The results showed that there existed an initial sudden drop in the average density of S. typhimurium bound to the biosensor surface versus duration at different temperatures for the two kinds of recognition elements, and the binding ability to S. typhimurium of phage-immobilized biosensors was much better than that of antibody-immobilized biosensors, with longevity longer than 30 days at all tested temperatures, though decreasing gradually over the testing period. While the longevity of antibody-immobilized biosensors was only about 30, 8 and 5 days at room temperature (25 °C), 45 °C and 65 °C, respectively. Meanwhile, the activation energy of the two kinds of biosensors was investigated, and it was found that phage immobilized sensors showed much higher activation energy than antibody immobilized sensors, which resulted in less dependency on temperature and thus having much better thermal stability than antibody immobilized sensors.

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