Impedance for Endocrine Disruption Compounds

An unintended consequence of our chemical innovations is the introduction of trace chemicals into our environment that are not necessarily directly toxic, but can impact nature. Mutations in animals/people can happen naturally, but perhaps in many cases human chemical ingenuity is to blame. Our motivations as chemists are honorable, and we have generated pesticides that help us to grow more food, agents to extract hydrocarbons from the earth, and durable materials that can be washed and reused in drinking and baby bottles. Functionally detecting these chemicals in our environment at trace levels, in real time, and in a cost-effective manner has been a challenge. Professor Matthew Francis and co-workers Ariel Furst and Alexander Hoepker have devised a powerful new method to detect suspect compounds known as endocrine disrupting chemicals. In this issue they report a novel assay that can functionally detect suspect compounds that bind to the estrogen receptor α. This approach involves direct electrical detection, which has the benefit of being readily interfaced with a number of existing platforms. Specifically, this team developed electrochemical impedance methods for the detection of endocrine disrupting compounds by using a novel sandwich scheme. Engineered Escherichia coli is produced that expresses the estrogen receptor α on its surface, and this structure behaves as a very large blocking scaffold that can restrict diffusion of ions to an electrode.