Non-Monotonic Effect of Substrate Inhibition in Conjunction with Diffusion Limitation on the Response of Amperometric Biosensors

The non-monotonic behavior of amperometric enzyme-based biosensors under uncompetitive substrate inhibition is investigated computationally using a two-compartment model consisting of an enzyme layer and an outer diffusion layer. The model is based on a system of reaction-diffusion equations that includes a nonlinear term associated with non-Michaelis-Menten kinetics of the enzymatic reaction and accounts for the partitioning between layers. In addition to the known effect of substrate inhibition, where the maximum biosensor current differs from the steady-state output, it has been determined that external diffusion limitations can also cause the appearance of a local minimum in the current. At substrate concentrations greater than both the Michaelis-Menten constant and the inhibition constant, and in the presence of external diffusion limitation, the transient response of the biosensor, after immersion in the substrate solution, may follow a five-phase pattern depending on the model parameter values: it starts from zero, reaches a global or local maximum, decreases to a local minimum, increases again, and finally decreases to a steady intermediate value. The biosensor performance is analyzed numerically using the finite difference method.