ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Pharmacol.
Sec. Ethnopharmacology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fphar.2025.1640821
This article is part of the Research TopicNovel Technologies and Methods for Monitoring Exogenous Harmful Residues in Traditional and Local Medicinal Plants and FungiView all 4 articles
Cu 2+ /Cu + Redox-Cycling-Driven Dual-Mode Sensor for Simultaneous Monitoring of Acetylcholinesterase Activity and Pesticide Exposure
Provisionally accepted
Sitong Lai
Kunhui SunYun WuXueyuan Wu
Yiqi YanGuojing LiuXiaoyi LiuYuanyuan GeLina ZengZiyu GuoShuhong WangPing Wang
Bing Wang
Han Zhang
Xie-an Yu*- Shenzhen Institute For Drug Control, Shenzhen, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
The procedural complexity and time-consuming of conventional pesticide residue detection methods in traditional Chinese medicines (TCMs) significantly impeded their application in modern systems. Herein, this study presented an innovative dual-mode sensor driven by Cu 2+ /Cu + redox-cycling, which achieved efficient signal transduction from enzyme inhibition to optical response for rapid acetylcholinesterase (AChE) activity and organophosphorus pesticide (OP) residue detection. Specifically, coordination-driven assembly of Azo-Bodipy 685 (AB 685) and Cu 2+ were employed to construct the AB-Cu NPs sensor, establishing a dynamic redox-responsive system. In the initial state, Cu 2+ quenched the optical signals of AB 685 through photoinduced electron transfer (PET), maintaining an "OFF" state. Upon AChE-catalyzed hydrolysis of acetylthiocholine chloride (ATChCl) to thiocholine (TCh), Cu 2+ was reduced to Cu + , thereby activating dual ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis)/fluorescence (FL) signals ("ON" state). OPs inhibited the activity of AChE, blocking Cu 2+ /Cu + conversion, which enabled residue quantification via signal suppression. Leveraging Cu²⁺/Cu⁺ redox -cycling for signal amplification, the sensor demonstrated positive sensitivity with detection limits of 0.0327 U/L for AChE activity while 1.72 ng/mL for triazophos. Notably, the Cu 2+ /Cu + valence interconversion coupled enzyme inhibition with probe responsiveness, ensuring the both procedural easily and rapid response. This advancement provided a real-time, portable and rapid detection for AChE activity and pesticide exposure of TCMs, bridging gaps in agricultural safety and pharmaceutical standardization.
Keywords: traditional Chinese medicines, Organophosphorus Pesticides, Acetylcholinesterase, Redox-cycling-driven, Dual-mode sensor
Received: 04 Jun 2025; Accepted: 11 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lai, Sun, Wu, Wu, Yan, Liu, Liu, Ge, Zeng, Guo, Wang, Wang, Wang, Zhang and Yu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Xie-an Yu, Shenzhen Institute For Drug Control, Shenzhen, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.