Team:Bielefeld-CeBiTec/BiosensorDesignMotivation

Biosensor Design

A handy tool for everyone

The term "biosensor" is widely used for sensors that are based on biological sensing elements. With these, detection becomes possible through recognition of analytes. Field applicability, easy handling and cheap evaluation devices are terms that go hand in hand with the term biosensor.

Biosensors have the potential to be used for a wide range of analytical purposes (Turner 2013). They thus have a great potential to help solving real world problems. Especially biosensors for arsenic detection have been widely adressed in research.

Biosensors can be used to detect toxic substances in a highly specific and sensitive manner. Furthermore, they can be cheaper and easier to handle than conventional detection methods (Kaur et al. 2015). For this reason, they are a field of active research and a popular topic in the iGEM competition. Most of these biosensors make use of living microorganisms.

References

Daunert, Sylvia; Barrett, Gary; Feliciano, Jessika S.; Shetty, Ranjit S.; Shrestha, Suresh; Smith-Spencer, Wendy (2000): Genetically Engineered Whole-Cell Sensing Systems: Coupling Biological Recognition with Reporter Genes. In Chem. Rev. 100 (7), pp. 2705–2738. DOI: 10.1021/cr990115p.

Kaur, Hardeep; Kumar, Rabindra; Babu, J. Nagendra; Mittal, Sunil (2015): Advances in arsenic biosensor development--a comprehensive review. In Biosensors & bioelectronics 63, pp. 533–545. DOI: 10.1016/j.bios.2014.08.003.

Pardee, Keith; Green, Alexander A.; Ferrante, Tom; Cameron, D. Ewen; DaleyKeyser, Ajay; Yin, Peng; Collins, James J. (2014): Paper-based synthetic gene networks. In Cell 159 (4), pp. 940–954. DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2014.10.004.

Turner, Anthony P F (2013): Biosensors: sense and sensibility. In: Chemical Society reviews 42 (8), S. 3184–3196. DOI: 10.1039/c3cs35528d.