Development of Environmental Biosensors for Detection, Monitoring, and Assessment

Abstract

Everything around us comprises our environment. Various environmental risk factors such as water, air, and soil pollution, food contaminations, chemical exposures, ultraviolet radiations, and climate change contribute to several diseases and health issues worldwide. So, the proper monitoring and control of these environmental hazards is the need of hour which requires the state-of-art techniques in order to rapidly detect distinct environmental pollutants in a highly sensitive manner. One such technique is the biosensing technique which has the capability of detecting various contaminants at affordable costs without compromising the sensitivity, specificity, and rapidity. A biosensor is an analytical device which comprises a bio-recognition component for separating the biomarker and a physicochemical transducer for converting the biological signal into analyzable form. Biosensors are portable and have found their applications in various areas such as disease diagnostics, clinical assay, environmental monitoring, food and agriculture security, biothreat security, etc. This chapter describes various biological sensing elements used in biosensors such as enzymes, a receptor antibody, whole cell, nucleic acid, etc. Various transduction techniques used in designing a biosensor like optical, electrochemical, magnetic, mass-based, etc. biosensors are also discussed. The use of nanomaterials in the designing of biosensors has further improved their sensitivity and specificity. The main focus of this chapter is on the current trends and developments in environmental biosensors.