Are luminescent bacteria suitable for online detection and monitoring of toxic compounds in drinking water and its sources?

Abstract

Biosensors based on luminescent bacteria may be valuable tools to monitor the chemical quality and safety of surface and drinking water. In this review, an overview is presented of the recombinant strains available that harbour the bacterial luciferase genes luxCDABE, and which may be used in an online biosensor for water quality monitoring. Many bacterial strains have been described for the detection of a broad range of toxicity parameters, including DNA damage, protein damage, membrane damage, oxidative stress, organic pollutants, and heavy metals. Most lux strains have sensitivities with detection limits ranging from milligrams per litre to micrograms per litre, usually with higher sensitivities in compound-specific strains. Although the sensitivity of lux strains can be enhanced by various molecular manipulations, most reported detection thresholds are still too high to detect levels of individual contaminants as they occur nowadays in European drinking waters. However, lux strains sensing specific toxic effects have the advantage of being able to respond to mixtures of contaminants inducing the same effect, and thus could be used as a sensor for the sum effect, including the effect of compounds that are as yet not identified by chemical analysis. An evaluation of the suitability of lux strains for monitoring surface and drinking water is therefore provided.

Fate and Removal of Pharmaceuticals and Illegal Drugs Present in Drinking Water and Wastewater

“…The presence of sulfamethoxazole in the environment increases drug resistance of bacteria. There is a gradual increase in the number of bacteria strains that are resistant to sulfamethoxazole effects [103,104]. Tetracyclines show acute toxicity towards D. magna, D. rerioand C. auratus.…”

Environmental Application of Reporter-Genes Based Biosensors for Chemical Contamination Screening

“…Microbial biosensors are good tool for monitoring of chemical quality in surface and drinking water, and that are broadly reviewed [15,45]. The examples of environmental application of these devices are described in excellent work of Xu et al, 2013 [50].…”

New Trends in Biosensors for Water Monitoring

“…Owing to the large number of enzymes and cofactors that the cells contain, a large variety of biosensors has been proposed for the detection of specific (groups of) analytes or for aquatic toxicity assessment, this latter application being addressed in section 2.3. Several reviews have been published on the topics (Lei et al, 2006), some of them being more specifically dedicated to yeast-based sensors (Baronian et al, 2004), geneticallymodified bacteria sensors (Daunert et al, 2000;Girotti et al, 2008;Hansen & Sorensen, 2001; Van der Meer & Belkin, 2010;Woutersen et al, 2010), or electrochemical cell biosensors ).…”

“…Bacteria, yeasts, algae and fish cells have been also used for the development of toxicity biosensors (Baronian, 2004;Daunert et al, 2000;Hansen & Sorensen, 2001;Lei et al, 2006;Girotti et al, 2008;Van der Meer et al, 2010;Woutersen et al, 2010). The biosensor response may be due to a change in cell metabolism (inhibition of enzyme activity, respiration or photosynthesis), cell alteration, death, or change in the expression of certain genes (modified organisms).…”

“…The most recent ones are given in Table 4. Optical biosensors are mainly based on luminescent modified bacteria, using typically the recA, uvrA, NrdA promoters for DNA damage detection, the grpE and dnaKp promoters for protein damage detection, and the fab A promoter for cell membrane damage (Woutersen et al, 2010).…”