Abstract
Since the conception of biosensor technology in biomedical research, this
field is emerging as a promising and high-throughput tool for neuro-engineering and
neurosciences research. It has been postulated that the accumulating property proteins
are the basic cause of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease,
Alzheimer’s disease and prion diseases. Thus, neurodegenerative diseases are also
called “protein misfolding disorders”. Biosensors have a wide range of applications in
biomedical research, including optical and electrochemical detection of biometal-protein interactions, detection of biomarkers, such as β-amyloids, apolipoprotein, and
tau proteins, and microRNA in blood and cerebrospinal fluid in neurodegenerative
diseases. These are composed of primary biological recognition elements that convert
the chemical signal into the voltage or current that evaluates the physical signal by
preparing a plot of sensor response against the analyte concentration. This chapter
presents a bird’s eye view on various aspects of progress in biosensor development
with special emphasis on their application, including metal-protein interactions studies,
detection of neurotransmitters using aptamers and calixarenes, detection of biomarkers
proteins, such as α-synuclein for Parkinson’s disease, apolipoprotein, tau and β-amyloid proteins for Alzheimer’s disease, and prion proteins. The chapter also
summarizes the novel materials reported for improved biosensor performance. This
chapter will be of high relevance to the biological scientists working in neuro-engineering and neurosciences research