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The first competitive disposable amperometric immunosensor based on gliadin-functionalized carbon/nanogold screen-printed electrodes was developed for rapid determination of celiotoxic prolamins. To date, no competitive spectrophotometric or electrochemical immunoassays have yet been successfully applied to gluten detection in processed food samples, which require the use of complex prolamin extraction solutions containing additives with denaturing, reducing and disaggregating functions. Thus, in this work, great effort was put into the optimization and performance evaluation of the immunosensor in terms of suitability as a screening tool for analysis of cereal-based food samples. For this purpose, aqueous ethanol or complex extraction mixtures, as the patented Cocktail Solution®, were proved effective in the extraction of gliadin. Good sensitivity was achieved after optimization of the immunocompetitive assay, giving limit of detection and limit of quantitation of 8 and 22 ng/ml of gliadin, respectively, for ethanol extracts. The immunosensor was proved to be suitable also for samples extracted with Cocktail Solution® after a proper dilution. Analysis of real samples of different flours proved the suitability of the immunosensing device as a powerful tool for safety assessment of raw materials used for the formulation of dietary products for celiac disease patients. This immunosensor combines good analytical performance using a very simplified set-up protocol with suitability for rapid screening analysis performed using inexpensive and portable instrumentation. Graphical abstract Depiction of the development and working principle of the competitive immunosensor.

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Glutamate is the major excitatory neurotransmitter in the brain, and an excess of glutamate can cause excitotoxicity, which is a common pathological process in many neurologic disorder such as stroke, brain trauma, and brain tumor. Therefore, monitoring glutamate in real time is of critical importance.  However, the existing methods for the detection and monitoring glutamate levels are limited.  Here in this work, we present a novel mediator-free, non-enzymatic electrochemical biosensor for real-time glutamate monitoring, based on immobilization of genetically engineered periplasmic glutamate binding protein onto gold nanoparticle-modified screen-printed carbon electrodes. Cyclic voltammetry is performed to determine the glutamate concentration in phosphate buffer solution (pH=7.4). The results show an excellent sensitivity with 0.1µM detection limit and the linearity was investigated in the 0.1µM-1µM range of glutamate concentration. The sensor was tested with common interfering substances such as aspartate, glutamine, serine, lysine and ascorbic acid, and exhibited high selectivity toward glutamate over those substances. Figure 1