By:
Dr. Alexander Simonian, Professor, Auburn University
Description:
There is a widespread need for analytical sensors capable of monitoring chemical and biological warfare agents, chemical / microbial contamination of food and wastewater, as well as for monitoring of human, animal, and plant health status, environmental and technological control. New biological sensor systems are being developed at an incredible fast pace due to the explosions in biotechnology in both, materials and applications. The versatility of their many applications is making them the analytical tools for the 21st Century. The level of literacy is corresponding to that currently needed by many fields of science, engineering and technology.
Enzymes application in biosensing has a long history. Exploitation of the enzyme-based "catalytic" process, where a target analyte is involved in the catalytic transformation as the substrate for particular enzyme, provides a great opportunity for detection of large number of complex compounds. The major advantage of a biosensor operating in the catalytic mode, in contrast to commonly used in the array-biosensor affinity-based "single action" mode, is the ability to continuously monitor any catalyzed cleavage using an appropriate mode of signal transduction.
This Tutorial may serve as a valuable introductory material to help understand modern biological sensor principles and application technology. Several examples of recent enzyme-based system will be discussed and analyzed.
Final Program