Abstract
The intensive use of toxic and remanent pesticides in agriculture has prompted research into novel performant, yet cost-effective and fast analytical tools to control the pesticide residue levels in the environment and food. In this context, biosensors based on enzyme inhibition have been proposed as adequate analytical devices with the added advantage of using the toxicity of pesticides for detection purposes, being more “biologically relevant” than standard chromatographic methods. This review proposes an overview of recent advances in the development of biosensors exploiting the inhibition of cholinesterases, photosynthetic system II, alkaline phosphatase, cytochrome P450A1, peroxidase, tyrosinase, laccase, urease, and aldehyde dehydrogenase. While various strategies have been employed to detect pesticides from different classes (organophosphates, carbamates, dithiocarbamates, triazines, phenylureas, diazines, or phenols), the number of practical applications and the variety of environmental and food samples tested remains limited. Recent advances focus on enhancing the sensitivity and selectivity by using nanomaterials in the sensor assembly and novel mutant enzymes in array-type sensor formats in combination with chemometric methods for data analysis. The progress in the development of solar cells enriched the possibilities for efficient wiring of photosynthetic enzymes on different surfaces, opening new avenues for development of biosensors for photosynthesis-inhibiting herbicides.
Highlights
Nowadays, with the aim of achieving high productivity in agriculture, pest control is managed through the use of a wide variety of intentionally toxic compounds, pesticides which are released into the environment with serious consequences
There are reported to be numerous biosensors developed for the detection of neurotoxic organophosphorus and carbamate insecticides based on the inhibition of cholinesterase that were reviewed concerning their general aspects [16], the parameters influencing the enzymatic inhibition such as the effect of substrate concentration, enzyme total activity or the presence of organic solvents [17], strategies for biosensor construction using various immobilization methods and the roles of various matrices used [18], improvement of the selectivity and sensitivity using genetically engineered mutant enzymes [19], biosensor integration in flow analytical manifolds [20,21], use of special detection techniques such as piezoelectric quartz crystal microbalance [22], combination with various kinds of nanomaterials [23], impact of cutting-edge technologies [24], specific application for fast screening of food samples [25], etc
The biosensors based on enzymatic inhibition are useful as an alarm or general toxicity indicator for the fast identification of the samples contaminated with pesticides
Summary
With the aim of achieving high productivity in agriculture, pest control is managed through the use of a wide variety of intentionally toxic compounds, pesticides which are released into the environment with serious consequences. Biosensors 2018, 8, 27 use of pesticides in the EU through the reduction of risk and impact on human health and the environment. The standard analytical methods that are used for the detection of pesticides are chromatographic techniques coupled with various detectors [2,3]. These methods have the advantages of being automated and accurate, with high specificity and can be used for simultaneous detection. This review focuses on this type of biosensor and aims to present its advances and current limitations
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