This review article provides an overview of the most recent literature on biosensors for environmental pollutants and food contaminants. Due to the large number of publications, only papers published between 2000 and January 2003 were considered. Also, while not all of the published literature could be reviewed here, over 200 references are cited to provide a good overview of research undertaken in the last two years. Older publications are covered by a number of earlier review articles. This article provides an introduction into the field including specific consideration of the application areas, describes the typical biosensor assay format used, and is subsequently structured according to the biorecognition elements used (i.e., nucleic acids, enzymes, whole cells, tissue and whole organisms, antibodies and receptors, and biomimetic materials). In addition, a section on microbiosensing systems is provided. Since only very few microbiosensors with applications in environmental and food systems have been published, enabling technology is also covered in this article.

Biosensors for environmental pollutants and food contaminants.

A biosensor composed of a high-density living bacterial cell array was fabricated by inserting bacteria into a microwell array formed on one end of an imaging fiber bundle. The size of each microwell allows only one cell to occupy each well. In this biosensor, E. coli cells carrying a recA::gfp fusion were used as sensing components for genotoxin detection. Each fiber in the array has its own light pathway, enabling thousands of individual cell responses to be monitored simultaneously with both spatial and temporal resolution. The biosensor was capable of performing cell-based functional sensing of a genotoxin with high sensitivity and short incubation times (1 ng/mL mitomycin C after 90 min). Dose-response curves for several genotoxins were obtained. The biosensors demonstrated an active sensing lifetime of more than 6 h and a shelf lifetime of two weeks.

Living Bacterial Cell Array for Genotoxin Monitoring

Chlorophyll a fluorescence has been extensively studied over the last few years. As demonstrated, this phenomenon is closely related to the state of photosystem II, which plays a leading role in the photosynthetic process, and therefore it has become a powerful tool to investigate this complex and any damage occurring in it as a result of physical or chemical stresses. This means that by using photosynthetic organisms as biological probes, one can consider chlorophyll a fluorescence as one of the techniques of choice to reveal the presence of some hazardous toxicants widely spread in the environment. Herbicides, pesticides, and heavy metals, whose concentration in water and food products is generally subject to extremely severe restrictions, are a concrete example of compounds detectable by chlorophyll a fluorescence. These dangerous substances react with the photosystem II, modifying the fluorescence emitted and giving responses which vary in a concentration-dependent manner. The possibility of performing easy, fast, and direct measurements of the fluorescence, even under light conditions, has opened new frontiers for the analysis in situ of pollutants. The aim of this review is to give an overview of the different techniques based on chlorophyll a fluorescence spectrometry, focusing in particular on those which represented the starting point for applications addressed to the assessment of toxic compounds in environmental samples.

Technological applications of chlorophyll a fluorescence for the assessment of environmental pollutants

The use of multiple-strain algal sensor chips for the detection and identification of volatile organic compounds.

On-line microbial biosensing and fingerprinting of water pollutants.

A novel technique is described for the identification and quantification of environmental pollutants based on toxicity fingerprinting with a metabolic lux-marked bacterial biosensor. This method involved characterizing the toxicity-based responses of the biosensor to seven calibration pollutants as acute temporal-dose response fingerprints. An algorithm is described to allow comparisons of responses of an unknown pollutant to be made against the calibration data. This is based on predicting pollutant concentration at each of six different time points over the course of a 5-min assay. If the prediction is consistent between the unknown pollutant and a calibration pollutant at the 95% test level, this is considered to be a positive identification. All seven calibration pollutants could be successfully distinguished from each other with this technique. Environmental samples, individually spiked with single concentrations of pollutants, were compared in this way against the calibration pollutants. An 83% identification success was achieved, with no false positives at the 95% test level. This is a simple and rapid technique that potentially can be applied to monitoring of industrial wastewater or as a screening tool for regulators.

A novel toxicity fingerprinting method for pollutant identification with lux-marked biosensors

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A novel toxicity fingerprinting method for pollutant identification with lux-marked biosensors