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A fibre optic biosensor based on luminol electrochemiluminescence (ECL) integrated in a flow injection analysis (FIA) system was developed for the detection of choline. The electrochemiluminescence of luminol was generated by a glassy carbon electrode polarised at +425 mV vs. a platinum pseudo-reference electrode. Choline oxidase (Chx) was immobilised either covalently on polyamide (ABC type) or on UltraBind preactivated membranes, or by physical entrapment in a photo-cross-linkable poly(vinyl alcohol) polymer (PVA-SbQ) alone or after absorption on a weak anion exchanger, DEAE (diethylaminoethyl) Sepharose. The optimisation of the reaction conditions and physicochemical parameters influencing the FIA biosensor response demonstrated that the choline biosensor exhibited the best performances in a 30 mM veronal buffer containing 30 mM KCl and 1.5 mM MgCl2, at pH 9. The use of a 0.5 ml min-1 flow rate enabled the measurement of choline by the membrane-based ECL biosensors in 8 or 5 min, with ABC or UltraBind membranes, respectively, whereas the measurement required only 3 min with the DEAE-PVA system. For comparison, the detection of choline was performed with Chx immobilised using the four different supports. The best performances were obtained with the DEAE-PVA-Chx sensing layer, which allowed a detection limit of 10 pmol, whereas with the ABC, the UltraBind and the PVA systems, the detection limits were 300 pmol, 75 pmol and 220 pmol, respectively. The DEAE-based system also exhibited a good operational stability since 160 repeated measurements of 3 nmol of choline could be performed with an RSD of 4.5% whereas the stability under the best conditions was 45 assays with the other supports.

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