Spore based biosensor: an innovative approach for monitoring sagety aspects in dairy industry

摘要

In order to meet strict regulations on food safety issues and owing to greater public awareness of environmental contaminants there is a huge need to monitor wider range of food contaminants linked with supply chain so that quality and safe foods canbe ensured to consumers. Analysts currently have a range of portable analytical techniques at their disposal for monitoring a variety of contaminant namely pesticides, aflatoxin Ml, drug residues, heavy metals and microbial pathogens in food matrixes. More recently, biosensors have emerged as another promising technology in the analyst's armory, especially for applications requiring persistent monitoring (D'Souza 2001a). Biosensors are defined as analytical devices integrating biological elements and signal transducers (Rasooly and Herold 2006). The biological elements such as enzymes, antibodies, receptors proteins, nucleic acids, cells, or tissue sections or bacterial spores interact specifically with an analyte, producing a signal that the transducer recognizes and converts into measurable parameters (Fig. 1).