This article reports on an investigation into the ability of minced banana peel to extract lead and copper ions from water and the parameters involved in this process. The kinetics of copper and lead uptake reached equilibrium in 10 min and the extraction of metals ions was favorable above pH 3. The medium was characterized by FTIR, which showed absorption bands of carboxylic and amine groups at 1730 and 889 cm1, respectively. The adsorption isotherm fitted by Langmuir’s model showed maximum adsorption capacities of 0.33 and 0.20 mmol g−1 (or 20.97 and 41.44 mg g−1) for Cu(II) and Pb(II), respectively. Minced banana peel was applied in the preconcentration system and showed approximately 20-fold enrichment factor and the column was reused for 11 cycles without loss in the percentage of recovery. The proposed method was applied in the determination of Cu(II) and Pb(II) in a sample of raw river water and was validated by comparison with a standard reference material.

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This work describes the synthesis and characterization of 2-aminothiazole-modified silica gel (SiAT), as well as its application for preconcentration (in batch and column technique) of Cu(II), Ni(II) and Zn(II) in ethanol medium. The adsorption capacities of SiAT determined for each metal ion were (mmol g(-1)): Cu(II)=1.20, Ni(II)=1.10 and Zn(II)=0.90. In addition, results obtained in flow experiments, showed a recovery of ca. 100% of the metal ions adsorbed in a column packed with 500 mg of SiAT. The eluent was 2.0 mol L(-1) HCl. The sorption-desorption of the studied metal ions made possible the development of a preconcentration method for metal ions at trace level in fuel ethanol using flame AAS for their quantification.

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Early prostate cancer (PCa) diagnostic is crucial to enhance patient survival rates; besides, non-invasive platforms have been developed worldwide in order to precisely detect PCa biomarkers. Therefore, the aim of the present study is to develop a new aptamer-based biosensor through the self-assembling of thiolated aptamers for PSA and VEGF on the top of gold electrodes. This biosensor was tested in three prostate cell lines (RWPE-1, LNCaP and PC3). The results evidenced a stable and sensitive sensor presenting wide linear detection ranges (0.08-100 ng/mL for PSA and 0.15 ng-100 ng/mL for VEGF). Therefore, the aptasensor was able to detect the patterns of PSA and VEGF released in vitro by PCa cells, which gave new insights about the prostate cancer protein dynamics. Thus, it could be used as a non-invasive PCa clinical diagnosis instrument in the near future. Graphical Abstract Overview of the experimental design applied to the aptamer-based electrochemical sensor self-assembled on the thiolated hairpin structure. A filter membrane was added on top of working electrode to provide the cell-attachment surface after aptamer incubation, without compromising the aptamer layer. The pore membrane allowed target proteins to pass to the aptamer surface; the MCH backfilling avoided unspecific protein binding to the gold electrode surface.

The aim of the present research is to propose a new method based on localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) for fast dengue virus detection. A pool with four dengue serotypes (DENV-1, -2, -3, -4) was detected through antigen-antibody binding using gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) as signaling antibody carriers. Such result was confirmed through surface plasmon resonance (SPR), transmission electron microcopy (TEM), and dynamic light scattering (DLS) techniques. The limit of detection was calculated for TCID 10 demonstrating a linear correlation between viral concentration and number of cells with an r value of > 0.993. The assay presented good sensibility and reproducibility of results and the negative controls were not mistakenly detected. This design requires no pretreatment or high trained person. In the future, it can be used in commercial antibody detection kits.

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