Preface

Expanding industrial production along with the world's growing population, which increases by more than 200,000 individuals per day, puts enormous pressure on the environment. Residues of manmade chemical compounds are everywhere; for example, recent reports indicate that hundreds of organohalogenide contaminants have been found in polar bear blood serum.

There is an urgent need for continuous monitoring of numerous macro and micropollutants and their metabolites in order to cope with the potential threats of extensive exploitation of natural resources and the increasing number of synthetic compounds around. This monitoring is necessary for improving quality of life and for dealing with rising living standards. Currently the contaminants of greatest concern are various micropollutants, such as heavy metals and pesticides used in agricultural production as well as residues of all kinds of pharmaceuticals. A major global threat to public health is "microbiological contamination," that is, antibioticresistant bacteria and fungi resulting from uncontrolled use of antibiotics.

Despite the growing need for quick and robust analytical information, we still lack methods for online, onsite automatic detection of contaminants allowing timely and effective management of abnormalities. Traditional analytical methods require sample collection and complex lab studies, taking several hours or even days to provide results. The development of new technologies, in particular various biosensing methods, potentially may allow for real-time, automated analyses in natural conditions with no prior treatment of samples. Although biosensor-based technologies require further efforts to become a serious alternative to standard methods, the number of solutions for the detection of minute residual concentrations of known and potential pollutants along with their metabolites is growing.

This book provides an overview of some of the latest trends in the development of biosensors for their application in environmental monitoring. It discusses different biosensor construction and signal-detection principles along with various sensing platforms and bio-recognition elements. In addition, it proposes algorithms to cope with the variability of analytical conditions and instability of environmental processes. Along with information on artificially constructed sensing systems, the book includes chapters dealing with natural "biosensor" organisms used for the assessment of detrimental effects of pollutants.

In addition, this book pays special attention to the analytical performance of biosensors, including their selectivity, sensitivity, and analysis time as well as their potential application for automated online analyses.

**II**

**Chapter 8 97**

**Chapter 9 121**

**Chapter 10 139**

**Chapter 11 157**

**Chapter 12 175**

Applications of Phage-Based Biosensors in the Diagnosis of Infectious

*by Umer Farooq, Muhammad Wajid Ullah, Qiaoli Yang and Shenqi Wang*

*by Efraín Tovar-Sánchez, Ramón Suarez-Rodríguez, Augusto Ramírez-Trujillo, Leticia Valencia-Cuevas, Isela Hernández-Plata and Patricia Mussali-Galante*

*by Eliana Mossé Alhadeff, Alfredo Jackson Telles Bosco, Caio Fragale Pastusiak,* 

Development of an Ethanol Biosensor Based on Silver Nanoparticles/ Polyaniline/Graphite/Epoxy Composite for Friendly Analytical

*Thais Anjos Correia and Ninoska Isabel Bojorge Ramirez*

Biosensors for Determination of Heavy Metals in Waters *by Amra Odobašić, Indira Šestan and Sabina Begić*

Principle and Development of Phage-Based Biosensors *by Umer Farooq, Qiaoli Yang, Muhammad Wajid Ullah* 

Diseases, Food Safety, and Environmental Monitoring

The Use of Biosensors for Biomonitoring Environmental Metal

Pollution

Application

*and Shenqi Wang*

**1**

soon as possible.

**Chapter 1**

**1. Introduction**

Introductory Chapter: The

Prospective of Biosensing in

In recent years, an increasing number of actions for environmental monitoring have become more and more topical. Environmental monitoring is necessary to protect the environment from pollutants and minimize the impact of unfavorable components and processes. As the world's population continues to increase, so does

Environmental pollution is defined as "the contamination of the physical and biological components of the earth/atmosphere system to such an extent that normal environmental processes are adversely affected" [1]. The substances that cause pollution are categorized as pollutants, which are commonly classified according to their chemical structure (organic and inorganic compounds), their mode of action (endocrine effect or toxicity), their source (natural or manmade) or by their amount (micro and macro pollutants) [2]. A pollutant can be any chemical or geochemical substance, biological organism or physical substance, which has been released into the environment by man and has harmful, unpleasant or inconvenient effect [3]. Depending on the nature of a pollutant, pollution is classified as air,

The release of pollutants (e.g., heavy metals, pesticides, drugs and pharmaceuticals) to the environment is a worldwide problem and there is a growing need to combat with uncontrolled pollution. For example, the global environmental monitoring plan (GEMP) for persistent organic pollutants (POPs), prefiguring a major concern, has become an important component of the evaluation of effectiveness of Stockholm Convention [4]. It provides an organizational framework for the collection of comparable monitoring data on the presence of POPs in order to detect changes in their concentrations [5]. Most pollutants released to the environment are undetectable, until their effects make it impossible to ignore them and we have to deal already with the consequences. Therefore, it is necessary to detect pollution as

Different types of methods and techniques are used for environmental analysis. Traditional methods used for the detection of molecular pollutants are mostly based on chromatographic techniques (gas chromatography or ultra-high performance liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry, thin-layer chromatography) and spectrophotometry. Chromatographic tools are sensitive and reliable

Environmental Monitoring

the amount of pollutants that are released into the environment.

water, soil or land, noise, radioactive and thermal pollution [3].

**2. Traditional methods for environmental analysis**

*Kairi Kivirand and Toonika Rinken*
