Biotechnological Advances in the Design of Algae-Based Biosensors

Novel atrazine-binding biomimetics inspired to the D1 protein from the photosystem II of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii

“…In this context, the possibility to exploit artificial peptides, bioinspired to supramolecular complexes, can greatly improve the features of sensing systems, in terms of cost, time, reproducibility, selectivity, and sensitivity. Indeed, the laboratory procedures required for the production of natural photosynthetic sub-components, as reaction centres or photosystem extracts, can result highly laborious and expensive; on the other hand, the exploitation of whole cells, although very sensitive, entails higher biological variables, these aspects becoming extremely disadvantageous during the biosensor development [3].…”

“…This protein, together with the D2 protein, constitutes the heterodimer core of Photosystem II (PSII). Many intrinsic features have made D1 protein one of the most investigated photosynthetic protein, in particular on aspects related to structure-function, gene, messenger, protein regulation, electron transport, reactive oxygen species, photo inhibition, stromal-granal translocations, reversible phosphorylation, specific proteases, and herbicide binding [2,3]. Focusing on D1 protein capability to bind either plastoquinone or xenobiotics, several studies have demonstrated the competitive atrazine interaction with D1 protein, physically entering in the same site of plastoquinone Q B , and hence hindering the natural redox cascade reactions in the J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f photosynthetic system.…”

“…The stability of the reaction centres is also a concern, considering that extracted RCs are stable for 20 min at room temperature, 1 hour at 4 °C, and 1 month at -20 °C [9]. On the other hand, the exploitation of whole cells means more variables as biological systems, and these aspects should not be underestimated during the development of a biosensor [3]. For this reason, the simple and cost-effective synthesis of artificial bioreceptors inspired to natural macromolecules is gaining momentum.…”

Alternative Strategies for Microbial Remediation of Pollutants via Synthetic Biology

“…Microbial cells have the advantage of a cellular system, which controls cell growth and response to external factors like temperature, light, pH, and oxygen (Tropel and Van Der Meer, 2004). The external environment of microbes inhabiting the contaminated site will respond to concentrations of various persistent compounds present (Ray et al, 2018;Antonacci and Scognamiglio, 2019). Whole cell biosensors for checking the presence, detection and biodegradation potential of xenobiotics compounds (pharmaceutical residues, pesticides, paraffin, PAHs and PCBs, etc.)…”

A dual electro-optical biosensor based on Chlamydomonas reinhardtii immobilised on paper-based nanomodified screen-printed electrodes for herbicide monitoring

“…This urgent issue struggled the development of new technologies, in support of the conventional ones, for the monitoring of these compounds in the environment. The last trends on the design of high-throughput platforms exploiting algae seems to be a versatile solution for the fabrication of biosensors (Antonacci & Scognamiglio, 2019). Indeed, these photosynthetic microorganisms are very sensitive to speci c environmental changes, enabling the detection of ultra-traces of pollutants.…”