Carbon Fiber Ultramicrodic Electrode Electrodeposited with Over-Oxidized Polypyrrole for Amperometric Detection of Vesicular Exocytosis from Pheochromocytoma Cell

Vesicular exocytosis is ubiquitous, but it is difficult to detect within the cells' communication mechanism. For this purpose, a 2 μm ultramicrodic carbon fiber electrode was fabricated in this work based on electrodeposition with over-oxidized polypyrrole nanoparticle (PPyox-CFE), which was applied successfully for real-time monitoring of quantal exocytosis from individual pheochromocytoma (PC12) cells. PPyox-CFE was evaluated by dopamine (DA) solutions through cyclic voltammetry and amperometry electrochemical methods, and results revealed that PPyox-CFE improved the detection limit of DA. In particular, the sensitivity of DA was improved to 24.55 μA·μM(−1)·μm(−2) using the PPyox-CFE. The ultramicrodic electrode combined with the patch-clamp system was used to detect vesicular exocytosis of DA from individual PC12 cells with 60 mM K(+) stimulation. A total of 287 spikes released from 7 PC12 cells were statistically analyzed. The current amplitude (I(max)) and the released charge (Q) of the amperometric spikes from the DA release by a stimulated PC12 cell is 45.1 ± 12.5 pA and 0.18 ± 0.04 pC, respectively. Furthermore, on average ∼562,000 molecules were released in each vesicular exocytosis. PPyox-CFE, with its capability of detecting vesicular exocytosis, has potential application in neuron communication research.