2011 Cross Strait Quad-Regional Radio Science and Wireless Technology Conference
The Application Study of Biosensors in
Environmental Monitoring
Na Hu, Min-hua Zhao
The School of Information and Control Engineering
Xi'an University of Architecture & Technology
Xi'an, Shaanxi, Province, China
E-Mail: hunaqi168@hotmail.com
zhaominhua7l@126.com
Abstract-Environmental monitoring is the premise of pollution,
and it provides scientific basis for environmental management
and protection. Based on its advantage of on-line monitoring,
biosensor is paid more and more extensive attention
environmental monitoring. This paper summarizes the basic
principle, characteristics and types of biosensors. The detecting
methods and evolution of biosensors are analyzed about in
environmental monitoring, especially emphasizes
application in the monitoring of water and atmosphere. The
development tendency and prospect of environmental biosensors
in the future are predicted as well.
Keywords-biosensor; environmental monitoring; application
I. INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, on a global scale, the human face three crises:
resource shortage, environment pollution and ecological
destruction. With the highly development of economy and
industry, people discharge the pollutants into the environment
constantly, which leading to the pollution problems more and
more seriously. Environmental issues receive increasingly
greater attention in the technical, scientific, and popular press.
The environmental pollution problems include: water pollution,
air pollution, noise pollution, radioactive pollution, etc.
Environmental pollution has led to a series of natural disasters,
such as global warming and rising sea levels, acid rain and so
on, which is making our earth less suitable to survive for
people. In order to guarantee the environment is no longer
continued to deteriorate and the polluted environment can get
the treatment timely, environmental monitoring is urgently
needed.
As the main monitoring methods, the traditional
environmental monitoring mainly used physical method or
chemical method, including offline, laboratory analysis, etc.
This method has obviously limitations in rapid sampling
processing and environmental pollution to be timely analysis.
Because high cost, detection experiments slow speed, limited
some samples analysis, which need instant analysis or have
budget [8]. Environmental pollution is a serious threat to
human survival and health, so it is an urgent demand to
monitor pollutants real-timely and quickly for accelerating
environmental pollution treatment.
978-1-4244-9793-5/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE
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Jia-liang Chuang, Li Li
The School of Information and Control Engineering
Xi'an University of Architecture & Technology
Xi'an, Shaanxi, Province, China
With the rapid development of technology, the sensor has
been widely used in environmental monitoring, medical and
health, agriculture, national defense military, etc. Especially
in biosensors received a great attention in environmental
monitoring because of its low cost, small volume and high
sensitivity. In this paper, the application and research
development of biosensors in environmental monitoring are
their
produced. It is not only to provide information for researchers
who study on environmental monitoring tentatively, but also
for people further develop on the biosensors, making it has
larger value of application in environmental monitoring.
Taking biological recognition element as the basis, to
elaborate the biosensors taxonomically in environmental
monitoring, especially the monitoring of water and atmosphere.
In the paper, the basic principle, characteristics and types of
biosensors are introduced in the second chapter; and then the
third chapter and the fourth chapter analyze the application of
biosensors in the monitoring of water quality and atmospheric
pollution; an example of the application of biosensor has been
given in the fifth chapter; the development tendency and
prospect of environmental biosensors in the future are
predicted finally.
II. BIOSENSORS
Since the first coining of the word 'biosensor' by Clark and
Lyons [3], research activities for development of biosensors
have increased exponentially. In 1967, American S.J. PuDiKe
made the first-generation biosensors. Now the second
generation biosensors have been developed (microbial sensor,
immune sensor, enzyme sensor and cell sensor), and
researching and developing the third generation, that is the
field effect biosensors which combined biological technology
and electronic technology. In recent years, with the drive of
information science and materials science, biosensors have a
rapid development.
A. The Definition and Basic Principle ofBiosensors
At present, biosensors are the subject of extensive research
for the development of applications in military, industrial,
biomedical, and clinical diagnosis, food technology, and
environmental monitoring. International Union of Pure and
Applied Chemistry (lUPAC) defmition: Biosensors is an
976 July 26-30, 2011
integrated device that is using a biological recognition
components which can direct contact with transducers in space,
the biological recognition components offer special
quantitative or half quantitative analysis of information.
Biosensors is a new subject, it is growing up in many kinds of
discipline mutual infiltration contain biology, medicine,
electrochemical, optical, thermodynamics and electronic
technology.
Biosensors have the following common structure:
molecular recognition component (including one or several
related bioactive materials) and transducer (it can tum the
signal of bioactive materials into an electrical signal). These
related bioactive materials change by the physical or chemical
transducers, to reprocess biological signal with the modem
microelectronics and industrial automation instrument
technology, and then various biosensors analysis device,
instruments and systems are constituted to use.
The basic principle of biosensor is turned the signal result
from the specificity of reaction of related bioactive materials
and monitoring materials into electrical signals by physical
components - transducers, thus learn to the information of
monitored substance indirectly. The principle of biosensor is
shown in figure 1 [4]. Biosensors can apply to monitor a great
deal of biomass.
o0 Bioactive Materials
o (Enzyme Compound
o 0 Antibody producc Light
DNA Sound
o 0o Organelles Heat
Cells electricity
000 ...... )
Figure 1. The principle of biosensors
B. The Characteristics ofBiosensors
The several characteristics of biosensors are following:
(1) Using the immobilized bioactive materials as catalyst.
And the catalyst can be utilized repeatedly, which overcome
the shortcomings of the analysis method that have a higher
expenditure and excessive complexity in the past.
(2) Biosensors have high accuracy, generally, the relative
error less than one percent.
(3) Specificity is very well, and biosensor only reacts to
certain substances. It can't be influenced by other complex
environment.
(4) It has a lower cost and a higher speed in the monitoring
analysis; only need a minute if you want to get the result.
(5) The way of experimental analysis is simple, it don't
need to sample pretreatment and easy to implement automatic
analysis.
In environmental monitoring, the characteristics of
biosensors is shown in the good specificity, higher speed of
analysis, simple operation, which can carry out online analysis
even living analysis, and it also use to detect slight pollutants
[9].
C. The Classification ofBiosensors
As follow, there are many kinds of classification in
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biosensors many ways basically:
• According to the difference of molecular recognition
components or sensing clement, biosensors can be
divided into microbial sensor, immune sensor, enzyme
sensor, cell sensor, gene sensor, organizational sensor,
etc.
• According to the principle of the test of the sensor
devices, biosensors can be divided into thermal
biosensor, field-effect tube biosensor, piezoelectric
biosensor, optical biosensor, acoustic biosensor,
enzyme electrode biosensor, dielectric biosensor, etc.
• According to the type of interaction between the
biological sensitive materials, biosensors can be
divided into two kinds: affmity biosensor and
metabolic biosensor.
III. THE APPLICATION OF BIOSENSORS IN QUALITY
MONITORING OF WATER
Water is an indispensable part of human life, but now the
water pollution is more and more serious, people to the
phenomenon of the monitoring and management of water is
imminent. There are many main elements in water monitoring,
such as PH value, biochemical oxygen demand (BOD),
dissolved oxygen (DO), conductivity, turbidity, heavy metal
ions in water, concentration of organic matter and so on. As
each kind of biosensors can identifY different bioactive
materials, monitoring of different indicators have to choose
appropriate sensor.
A. The Monitoring ofBiochemical Oxygen Demanded (BOD)
As one of the five water quality monitoring of conventional
item, biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) is also the most
commonly index of water pollution monitoring. Biochemical
oxygen demand (BOD) means oxygen consumption in the
process of pollutants such as organic oxidation by microbes.
There are higher values of biochemical oxygen demand (BOD);
there are more organic pollutants in the monitoring water.
Now generally determining BOD method that used at
home and abroad is the traditional dilution method, which is
the five-day BOD (BODS). The method is to monitor the
oxygen consumption of the monitoring water in the 20 degrees
Celsius in five days, and the difference value of oxygen
consumption between the first day and the fifth day is BODS.
In every liters of high concentration of industrial wastewater,
BODS can amount to tens of millions of or millions of mg,
urban sewage is up to 200 mg/L, and the unpolluted water is
below the 2 mg/L. This method is more complicated and
usually cost more operation time. The influence of the external
environment factors such as temperature is high, and it should
not be used for the actual site monitoring. When some of the
water samples are poisonous, even can't be tested or are
harmful to testing personnel.
Detecting BOD in water samples by BOD biosensor only
needs about 10 to 15 minutes or so. This kind of BOD
biosensor is mainly composed of biological fixed mode and
aerobic electrode. When organic pollutants in water samples
are decomposed by microbial, the aerobic electrode's current
reduce. Until the consumption of oxygen spreading to
biological membrane and the consumption of oxygen
breathing by microbe are balance, the current is to be stable.
That is mean, the BOD in the sample water can be known
through the test of the current value change. Now researchers
developed the biosensors used to monitor the BOD, composed
by SPT! and SPT2 which two new isolated from yeast and fIx
on glass carbon electrodes. It is only needs fIve minutes or so
if the biosensor applied to the monitoring of polluted water and
the minimum value measurement can reach 2mg/L [I].
B. The Monitoring ofHeavy Metal Ion
Due to the large-scale emissions of industrial wastewater,
the concentration of heavy metal ion in polluted water, leading
to the reducing of the species of organism in ocean and
endanger to human health. In1993, the biosensor was
composed of merging merRIPmer and luxCDABE by
Selifonova, to monitor the mercury in water. In 2000, Sorensen
produced the biosensor strain to monitor the mercury with the
same method, and the minimum detection concentration can
reach 0.2ng/g. In 2002, Leth reached caligenes eutrophus
AEl239 strains, have very good inspection effect on copper
[5]. Put an operon from Vibrio fischeri into AE1239 under the
control of promoter induced by copper, to bring about bacteria
glimmer for promoter of copper. Together with the
micro-organisms and fIber embedded in the polymer matrix,
you can get high sensitivity, wide measurement range and
good stability of biosensors [2].Also, the biosensors are made
by fluorescent pseudomonas can use to monitor the heavy
metal ion.
Nowadays, it is commonly used enzyme biosensors which
made by enzyme immobilization technology to monitor the
heavy metal ion. The main reason is heavy metal ion would
restrain the enzyme, and the activity of enzyme could recover
if we combine the heavy metal ions and EDTA or DTPA under
the same proportion, thus we can monitor the concentration of
heavy metal ions.
In addition, there are special biosensors to monitor the
concentration of copper ions and zinc ions. To the copper ions
concentration monitoring; the biosensors use Saccharomyces
cerevisiae recombinant strains as biological components. It can
measure the CuS04 solution between 0.5�2Mm [10]. And the
biosensors for monitoring the concentration of zinc in
wastewater are using Alcaligenes cutrophus.
IV. THE ApPLICATION OF BIOSENSORS IN ATMOSPHERIC
POLLUTION
Air pollution is the concentration of certain substances in
the atmosphere is out of limits, and it is harmful and can
destroy the ecological balance. The same with water pollution,
air pollution not only has kinds of pollutants, but also has
serious harm to human health. Today, the main pollutions have
sulfIde, nitride, carbide and some organic compounds or
inorganic compounds, etc. In order to maintain our survival
environment, the biosensors to monitor these pollutants in the
atmosphere also have come out.
A. Greenhouse Effect Monitoring
Year by year, with the increasing of C02 that human emit
into atmosphere, the greenhouse effect also increases
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consequently, which has already caused a series of serious
problems, such as global warming. Hiroaki S made high
sensitivity electric potential sensor used autotrophic microbes
and oxygen electrode to monitor C02 and had a higher
sensitivity. Suzuki developed a more convenient biosensor to
monitor C02 by using semiconductor technology. The
biosensor contains sensing clement, AID converter,
amplifying circuit, data processing circuit, signal output and
power module. [I1]
B. Acid Rain Monitoring
Acid rain is mainly cause by the reaction of rain absorbing
acidity gas, such as S02, nitrogen oxides, est. Acid rain have
very strong corrosive. Marty invented amp biosensor by
fIxing subcellularor ganelle onto oxygen electrode. After ten
minutes, it can achieve stability using the biosensor monitor
the S02 in the sample of acid rain [12]. This method has high
accuracy, however, the bioactive material life is so short, so it
can't use for a long time. In addition, to use sulfur bacteria as
bioactive materials to produce electrodes and the oxygen will
be consumed which lead to the current cut down, once sulfur
ions are assimilated by sulfur bacteria, thereby to detect the
concentration of the sulfur ions.
V. THE APPLICAnON OF BIOSENSORS IN OTHER
ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING
The application of Biosensors in environmental
monitoring not only reflects in water or atmospheric testing,
but also in others. An example is only given in this article.
Arsenic pollution is refers to waste water or waste gas which
cause from combusting the glass, paper and other materials
contain arsenic or compound leading to a environmental
pollution. Especially the harm made from the industrial
production and the use of arsenic pesticides on soil. Arsenic
and its compound are toxic, so people will be poison after
eating the crops which come from the arsenic excessive soil.
Roberto use the green fluorescent protein extracted from
jellyfIsh made into an enzyme biosensor, to test the
concentration of arsenic and arsenic compound [13].
VI. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTHER REASEARCH
Although the application of biosensors is still preliminary,
undoubtedly, its appearance provide the possibility of
continuous and automation for environmental monitoring. The
using of biosensors not only reduces the costs of
environmental monitoring and the time needed for the
detection pollutants, but also increases the sensitivity of the
environmental monitoring. Biosensors have great potential in
environmental monitoring, because of its advantages of
analysis speedily, operating simple, and can monitoring on-site.
After decades of research, biosensors have access to the huge
development and have presented the commercialized trend for
environmental monitoring. However, because of some
bioactive materials in biosensors have low stability and short
living time, even the prices of them are expensive, lead to the
cost of the biosensors are high. And the phenomenon result in
biosensors can not be used widely in the fIeld of environmental
monitoring.
Modem science and technology have been developing
rapidly, and all kinds of new materials and technology has
been applied in every field. As the development of
microelectronics processing technology, nanotechnology,
molecular biology and biological technology, the biosensors
continue to improve [14]. The emergence of new biological
sensors to create conditions by selecting new microbe species
and synthesizing new biological materials and introducing
genetic engineering technology. And it is helpful to biosensor
of miniaturization and portability for the applications of
semiconductor technology and piezoelectric crystal technology.
It is can be expected that the development of future biosensors
in environmental monitoring will toward miniaturization,
multi- parameters and multi-function, intelligent and low cost,
easy to carry and easy to operate. Base on the advance of
biosensors and population increasingly, environmental
degradation, biosensors in the environmental monitoring
which will play an important role increasingly.

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