Pectin modified metal nanoparticles and their application in property modification of biosensors

Abstract

Pectin is a structural anionic heteropolysaccharide and abundantly found in the cell wall of terrestrial trees and plants. It exhibits several advantageous properties such as non-toxicity, cheap, biodegradable, biocompatible, abundant, flexible, etc. Functional groups like carboxylic acid and hydroxyl make pectin suitable to be covalently bonded with other biomolecules and proteins. Based on these properties, pectin is being extensively employed to encapsulate/coat metal nanoparticles (MNPs) to inhibit their aggregation and enhancing the suitability of MNPs for a wide range of applications in healthcare like drug delivery, antimicrobial activity, antioxidant etc. Another important application of pectin is to enhance the electrochemical performances of sensors in which electrode materials are modified with pectin, which immobilizes the enzyme without disturbing the basic electron transfer properties of the electrode. Thus pectin is found to have great potential for developments in future in various fields like sensing, drug delivery etc. This review covers the application of pectin for MNPs stabilization and electrochemical sensors to improve their properties. The review also emphasizes synthetic strategies and electrochemical analysis of analytes. This review will provide a comprehensive overview of pectin's applicability and can help to design novel and efficient MNPs and electrochemical sensors for a wide range of applications.

Keywords

• Pectin
• Stabilization
• Biosensors
• Metal nanoparticles
• Surface modification