Biosensor
hideA biosensor is a device for the detection of an analyte that combines a biological component with a physicochemical detector component.
It consists of 3 parts:
The most widespread example of a commercial biosensor is the blood glucose biosensor, which uses the enzyme glucose oxidase to break blood glucose down. In doing so it first oxidizes glucose and uses two electrons to reduce the FAD (a component of the enzyme) to FADH2. This in turn is oxidized by the electrode (accepting two electrons from the electrode) in a number of steps. The resulting current is a measure of the concentration of glucose. In this case, the electrode is the transducer and the enzyme is the biologically active component.
Recently, arrays of many different detector molecules have been applied in so called electronic nose devices, where the pattern of response from the detectors is used to fingerprint a substance. Current commercial electronic noses, however, do not use biological elements.
A canary in a cage, as used by miners to warn of gas could be considered a biosensor. Many of today's biosensor applications are similar, in that they use organisms which respond to toxic substances at a much lower level than us to warn us of their presence. Such devices can be used in environmental monitoring, trace gas detection and in water treatment facilities.
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News tagged with biosensors
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Surgical removal of a tissue sample is now the standard for diagnosing cancer. Such procedures, known as biopsies, are accurate but offer only a snapshot of the tumor at a single moment in time.
Small RNAs yield great amounts of data from ocean microbe samples
May 14, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- An ingenious new method of obtaining marine microbe samples while preserving the microbes' natural gene expression has yielded an unexpected boon: the presence of many varieties of small RNAs -- snippets ...
MIT reels in RNA surprise with microbial ocean catch
May 13, 2009 |
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An ingenious new method of obtaining marine microbe samples while preserving the microbes' natural gene expression has yielded an unexpected boon: the presence of many varieties of small RNAs — snippets of RNA that act as ...
A Forceful New Method to Sensitively Detect Proteins
Mar 13, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory recently reported the detection of toxins with unprecedented speed, sensitivity, and simplicity. The approach can sense as few as a few hundred molecules in a drop ...
Lighting up the lives of the elderly -- adaptively (Video)
Feb 20, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Artificial light affects us in subtle ways. At its best, ambient lighting can relax, soothe or excite, but used poorly it can drain us of energy and disrupt sleep. What if lighting could adapt ...
Nano-tetherball biosensor precisely detects glucose
Nanotechnology / Bio & Medicine
Jan 22, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers have created a precise biosensor for detecting blood glucose and potentially many other biological molecules by using hollow structures called single-wall carbon nanotubes anchored ...
