An innovative bio-tissue network signal amplifier activated by high-N-doped carbon for uric acid detection

We herein report the first attempt to engineer an innovative bio-tissue network signal amplifier transduced by a novel natural N-doped carbon material. In order to prevent kidney uric acid (UA) stone disease in advance, based on the excretion of most UA through the kidney, as well as the high nitrogen content in animal tissues, and considering the biocompatibility, a high-N-doped carbon was firstly prepared by in situ carbonization and chemical activation method with the mouse kidney as precursor. The activated mouse kidney transformed carbon (AMKC) had a large specific surface area and network hierarchical pore structure, and played the biological transduction for signal enrichment to vastly increase sensitivity to detect UA, which may be due to the multi-circuitry performance of bio-tissue. Under the optimized conditions, AMKC as a network signal amplifier expressed a linear relationship to UA concentrations from 0.5 to 300 μM, with a high sensitivity of 0.1195 μA μM−1 and a low detection limit of 0.15 μM (3σ). Furthermore, the bio-tissue multi-circuitry signal amplifier exhibited a high selectivity for UA even with interference of other biological inorganic salts and small organic molecules, which has broad application prospects in clinical diagnosis and detection.