Robab Bahreini,1,*Marziyeh Azizi,2Amin Hajhosseini,3Amirhossein Parang,4Fereshteh Gholami,5
1. Student Research Committee, Bushehr University of Medical Sciences, Bushehr, Iran 2. Student Research Committee, Bushehr University of Medical Sciences, Bushehr, Iran 3. Student Research Committee, Bushehr University of Medical Sciences, Bushehr, Iran 4. Student Research Committee, Bushehr University of Medical Sciences, Bushehr, Iran 5. Student Research Committee, Bushehr University of Medical Sciences, Bushehr, Iran
Introduction: In recent decades, environmental pollution caused by human and industrial activities has been the source of climate change, and on the other hand, it has a negative impact on human health and quality of life. This has led to increasing concerns about this, and countries are looking for innovative tools and early warning systems to monitor the quality of air, water, and soil, as well as the exact time and place of pollution. In this context, biosensors are of interest due to their cost-effectiveness, speed of operation, and in-situ and real-time evaluation. Biosensors can convert a biochemical reaction into a measurable signal by combining a biological diagnostic agent with a transducer. Despite the advances in the field of environmental monitoring, there are shortcomings of expensive equipment and time-consuming traditional analytical methods (chromatographic technique). Also, the increasing number of polluting sources is associated with the increasing need for warning and control systems in the place of pollutants.
Methods: In this review, statistics and required data have been collected using keywords such as Biosensors, and Environmental Pollution, citing reliable databases such as PubMed, Google Scholar, and Scopus. Data quality was evaluated and the most relevant articles from 2017 until 2022 were reviewed.
Results: Nowadays, biosensors such as immunosensors, aptasensors, genosensors, enzymatic biosensors, and nanophotonic transducers are used to detect and monitor various environmental pollutants. The detection elements in these biosensors are antibodies, aptamers, nucleic acids, enzymes, and photons respectively. Biosensors are fast, specific, sensitive, reusable, maintenance-free, and also provide early warning systems and portable diagnostic tools. Examples of biosensors and diagnostic systems are reviewed in this study.
- Biosensors as simple, sensitive, and miniaturized methods for detection and monitoring of pesticides such as organophosphorus insecticides
- aptasensors for detection of acetamiprid from wastewater samples; In these biosensors, silver nanoparticles are doped on graphene oxide nanocomposite and these nanocomposites are excellent support for aptamer stabilization. Recently, the distinction of targets with different functional groups and rehybridization has increased. The reason for this is the development of aptasensors for ease of modification, thermal stability, laboratory synthesis, and the possibility of designing their structure.
- Optical transducers: These types of biosensors have significant advantages, including being cheaper, faster, and using fewer reagents, high sensitivity, and not requiring labels and complex labeling methods. nanophotonic transducers for label-free environmental monitoring have offered other advantages such as immunity to electromagnetic interference, high sensitivity, wide bandwidth, and more importantly, miniaturization capacity and portability due to the scalable technologies used to manufacture them. The most common nanophotonic biosensor is the surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor. The function of this biosensor is based on the change of reflectance on a metal layer in close contact with a biological environment. The SPR sensor has been widely developed and commercialized. There are difficulties in miniaturizing this technique and turning it into a portable instrument, and it has a limited number of channels to perform simultaneous measurements. In recent years, many advances have been made in the field of optical biosensors with higher energy.
Conclusion: Despite the promising features of biosensor devices as ideal environmental monitoring tools, these devices were not possible to use in the field due to their miniaturization level and their full functionality outside the laboratory. Nanophotonic biosensors based on evanescent sensing have advantages such as sensitivity, rapidity, selectivity, multiplexing, cheapness, multiplexing, label-free detection, and lab-on-a-chip integration, and are considered a suitable choice for portable point-of-care detection. And they have also passed the stages of laboratory proof in terms of multiplexing and miniaturization in compact platforms. This new technology will soon pass through the experimental stages and enter the marketing and market phase. The value of these nanophotonic biosensors in 2013 was estimated at 39.11 billion, and predictions have given a double value for this technology in the future.