A SMALL VOLUME, HIGHLY SENSITIVE METHOD FOR DETECTING ENVIRONMENTAL INSULTS

摘要

Subtle changes in environmental stress can now be detected and measured atsublethal levels as a generic response to environmental stress. The presentinvention provides an improved method to detect changes in the environmentalstress level in very small volumes to permit very high throughput of analyses.The stress change is indicated as a change in the luminescence output of agenetically engineered microorganism. In the present invention, theluminescence gene complex is under the control of a stress inducible promoter.The volumes contemplated range from about 0.5 uL to about 10 mL of media inwhich the detector organism is suspended.