Abstract
The indiscriminate use of herbicides in agriculture contributes to soil and water pollution, with important endangering consequences on the ecosystems. Among the available analytical systems, algal biosensors have demonstrated to be valid tools thanks to their high sensitivity, cost-effectiveness, and eco-design. Herein, we report the development of a dual electro-optical biosensor for herbicide monitoring, based on Chlamydomonas reinhardtii whole cells immobilised on paper-based screen-printed electrodes modified with carbon black nanomaterials. To this aim, a systematic study was performed for the selection and characterisation of a collection among 28 different genetic variants of the alga with difference response behaviour towards diverse herbicide classes. Thus, CC125 strain was exploited as case study for the study of the analytical parameters. The biosensor was tested in standard solutions and real samples, providing high sensitivity (detection limit in the pico/nanomolar), high repeatability (RSD of 5% with n = 100), long lasting working (10 h) and storage stability (3 weeks), any interference in the presence of heavy metals and insecticides, and low matrix effect in drinking water and moderate effect in surface one.
Highlights
In the last decades, pollution of soil and water from toxic chemicals as pesticides caused general concerns for the resulting harmful effects on the ecosystems and human health
With the intent to contribute in coping with these main drawbacks, we propose an efficient approach to test whole cells of C. reinhardtii as a good biocomponent for the development of an eco-designed dual transduction algal biosensor for herbicides detection, exploiting the green photosynthetic alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii immobilised on paper-based screen-printed electrodes modified with carbon black nanomaterials
A systematic characterisation of 28 strains of C. reinhardtii With the aim to increase the selectivity of algae-based biosensors we propose a systematic study of a collection of 28 strains of the green alga C. reinhardtii to exploit as an array of biocomponent with different affinity towards diverse herbicide classes
Summary
Pollution of soil and water from toxic chemicals as pesticides caused general concerns for the resulting harmful effects on the ecosystems and human health. The major pesticide groups which recorded the Antonacci et al J Nanobiotechnol (2021) 19:145 for the fabrication of biosensors [2]. These photosynthetic microorganisms are very sensitive to specific environmental changes, enabling the detection of ultratraces of pollutants. Algae-based biosensors represent intriguing devices for photosynthetic herbicide detection (triazine and ureic classes). Their mechanism of action is strictly related to the fluorescence of the chlorophyll a and its modulations in the presence of xenobiotic compounds. The use of algae as biorecognition element tightly fits with biosensor requirements, in particular concerning the sensitivity able to meet the MRL of EU Directives for drinking and surface waters (EU Directive 98/83/EC, EU Dir. 2013/39/EC)
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