Electrochemical sensor based on molecularly imprinted poly-arginine for highly sensitive and selective erythromycin determination

As a macrolide antibiotic, erythromycin is often used to treat bacterial infections in animal husbandry, but excessive use of erythromycin will make its residue in the animal and subsequently enter the human body through consumption, furthermore causing a different degree of damage to human health. It is quite essential to develop a fast and precise quantitative detection manner for erythromycin. In this study, we use arginine as a functional monomer and erythromycin as a template molecule to electro-polymerize a layer of molecularly imprinted polymer film on the surface of a glassy carbon electrode, and then use it as a recognition element to achieve quantitative erythromycin monitoring. The linear detection range of the prepared electrochemical sensor is from 3 nM to 1600 µM, the lowest detection limit ( S/N = 3) is 2.01 nM, and the sensitivity is 57,300 µA cm −2 µM −1 . The selectivity, reproducibility, and stability of the electrochemical sensor are satisfactory. At the same time, it can monitor whether honey contains erythromycin and its concentration, the recovery rate from 96.4 to 104.2%. After a series of performance tests, the results indicated that the Arg-MIP/GCE sensor has the potential to be applied in the measurement of erythromycin, which exists in food and agro-products.