Abstract:

Aspartame is a widely used artificial sweetener in many low calorie foods and beverages. Determination of its concentration in foodstuff is important as aspartame is a relatively expensive material. A novel optical biosensor for the determination of aspartame in beverage based on a bienzyme system is presented. An aspartame biosensor was fabricated employing a bienzyme system composed of chymotrypsin and alcohol oxidase immobilised onto a egg shell membrane and an oxygen-sensitive optode membrane as the transducer. The detection schemes involve the enzymatic reactions of aspartame leading to the depletion of oxygen level of the medium with concomitant enhancement of the fluorescence intensity of the oxygen-sensitive membrane.