Advances in airborne microorganisms detection using biosensors: A critical review

Abstract

Humanity has been facing the threat of a variety of infectious diseases. Airborne microorganisms can cause airborne infectious diseases, which spread rapidly and extensively, causing huge losses to human society on a global scale. In recent years, the detection technology for airborne microorganisms has developed rapidly; it can be roughly divided into biochemical, immune, and molecular technologies. However, these technologies still have some shortcomings; they are time-consuming and have low sensitivity and poor stability. Most of them need to be used in the ideal environment of a laboratory, which limits their applications. A biosensor is a device that converts biological signals into detectable signals. As an interdisciplinary field, biosensors have successfully introduced a variety of technologies for bio-detection. Given their fast analysis speed, high sensitivity, good portability, strong specificity, and low cost, biosensors have been widely used in environmental monitoring, medical research, food and agricultural safety, military medicine and other fields. In recent years, the performance of biosensors has greatly improved, becoming a promising technology for airborne microorganism detection. This review introduces the detection principle of biosensors from the three aspects of component identification, energy conversion principle, and signal amplification. It also summarizes its research and application in airborne microorganism detection. The new progress and future development trend of the biosensor detection of airborne microorganisms are analyzed.

Nanomaterials and metal-organic frameworks for biosensing applications of mutations of the emerging viruses

“…Likewise, individuals can be monitored periodically and continuously in vivo and made in-person diagnostics, using biosensors such as “Point of Care Testing” (POCT) devices, where many functions are integrated into individual microchips [ [78] , [79] , [80] , [81] ]. POCT devices facilitate the process of quick diagnosis for these viruses like COVID-19 [ 12 , 31 , 39 , [82] , [83] , [84] , [85] ].…”

Rapid detection of airborne protein from Mycobacterium tuberculosis using a biosensor detection system

“…13,14 Biosensor technology development is relatively mature, and it has the advantages of high integration, high sensitivity and short detection time. 15 Many existing air samplers are not very effective collectors, resulting in additional loss of captured pathogens and making it difficult to detect them. Mcdevitt et al designed the G-II EBC collector to distinguish the different types of EBC produced by the oral cavity and respiratory tract.…”

“…20 However, the sample usually requires manual labor to load it onto the actual sensor for detection, which will cause errors. 15 Moreover, since MTB is mostly transmitted through air, it is not enough to detect only liquid TB samples. Therefore, a continuous sampling system that can automatically load captured airborne TB samples into sensors should be established.…”

New approach in SARS-CoV-2 surveillance using biosensor technology: a review

“…Additionally, biosensors may convenient to enable the acquisition of both pathogen information in a short time and host response information as well. This could facilitate the prevention process and quick diagnosis for such kinds of viruses as SARS-CoV-2 (Xu et al 2020 ; Mao et al 2020a ; Ma et al 2021 ). For instance, novel biosensors such as electrochemical biosensor (EB), optical biosensor (OB), and surface plasmon resonance (SPR) are used for the detection of RNA viruses as “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats-associated protein 9 (CRISPR-Cas9)” based on a paper strip, nucleic acid-based, aptamer-based, and antigen-Au/Ag nanoparticles (Samson et al 2020 ).…”