From Information to Intelligence

Biosensors is one of the fast growing area today. This technology has a huge potential that can be compared to RFID. It is likely that they will be everywhere in a couple of years. Surprisingly however they seem far less popular, at least in my circle, than RFID. So after seeing a very impressive talk about them on thursday, I wanted to share my enthusiam about them with you.

What is a biosensor ?

A biosensors is defined in scientific journal as:

“A biosensor is an analytical device which converts a biological response into an electrical signal. The term ‘biosensor’ is often used to cover sensor devices used in order to determine the concentration of substances and other parameters of biological interest even where they do not utilise a biological system directly. ”

A more simple definition would be that a biosensor is a sensor that is able to tell you what biological components are present in a material such as water or blood.

Why biosensor will change my life ?

It may be not obvious how biosensors are usefull at first sight so let me give you three domains of application:

Fighting Bioterrorism

That is the most obvious use of biosensors, helping to fight bioterrorism. For instance the MIT Lincon Lab have developed a powerful sensor that can detect airborne pathogens such as anthrax and smallpox in less than three minutes.

This device, called PANTHER (for PAthogen Notification for THreatening Environmental Releases), could be used in buildings, subways and other public areas, and can currently detect 24 pathogens, including anthrax, plague, smallpox, tularemia and E. coli.

Water Drinking

Biosensors can be used as early warning screening tools for drinking water security because they can spot toxics in a matter of minutes. Hence they can be use to monitor critical locations of the water system, such as pump stations, or prior to the biological process in a waste water treatment plant.

For example Toshiba has developped a prototype to detect harmful substances in groundwater to protect against environmental contamination :

Food safety

Imagine that in the middle of the night you get thirsty, so you go to the kitchen, grab the bottle of milk and you are ready to get a nice cup of milk. Fortunatly, you look at the biosensor and see that it has turn red. Thanks to it you know that something went wrong, and that you must not drink the milk because it now contains a potential biological substance that will make you sick. Thanks to the biosensor, you will not be sick for your important meeting/date.

Instead of expiration date, biosensors will be able to tell us if the food is safe or not. This will be far more accurate and safe. Maybe we will have a tool like this on day:)

Of course theses are just few examples of what biosensors are good for. They can also be used to diagnose drugs in blood, or in crime forensic.

Anatomy of a biosensor

A biosensor is composed of the following part

• The biocatalyst that will react (complex) with the biological substance.
• The transducer also called the detector element that will transform the reaction that occurs in the biocatalyst into a signal which more easily measurable
• The amplifier used to make the transducer ouput signal more powerfull so it can be treated by a chips/computer
• The signal processing engine that will interpret the sensor signal a give it a meaning
• The Gui that will display the result

Conclusion

If biosensors were first developped for glucose monitoring in diabetes patients since a few years the market has exploded due to the wide range of possible application. Currently, biosensors represent a rapidly expanding field, at the present time, with an estimated 60% annual growth rate.