Microbial whole‐cell arrays

Abstract

SummaryThe coming of age of whole‐cell biosensors, combined with the continuing advances in array technologies, has prepared the ground for the next step in the evolution of both disciplines – the whole‐cell array. In the present review, we highlight the state‐of‐the‐art in the different disciplines essential for a functional bacterial array. These include the genetic engineering of the biological components, their immobilization in different polymers, technologies for live cell deposition and patterning on different types of solid surfaces, and cellular viability maintenance. Also reviewed are the types of signals emitted by the reporter cell arrays, some of the transduction methodologies for reading these signals and the mathematical approaches proposed for their analysis. Finally, we review some of the potential applications for bacterial cell arrays, and list the future needs for their maturation: a richer arsenal of high‐performance reporter strains, better methodologies for their incorporation into hardware platforms, design of appropriate detection circuits, the continuing development of dedicated algorithms for multiplex signal analysis and – most importantly – enhanced long‐term maintenance of viability and activity on the fabricated biochips.

Cell-Based Microarrays for In Vitro Toxicology

“…CMAs harboring microorganisms are often referred to as microbial microarrays. This review discusses toxicity assessment and focuses entirely on mammalian CMAs; the interested reader is referred to Belkin and coworkers' (50,51) comprehensive surveys about microbial microarrays. From a technical viewpoint, CMAs are categorized into two major classes (48), nonpositional and positional CMAs (Figure 2).…”

Bacterial Biosensors for Measuring Availability of Environmental Pollutants

“…Initiated almost twenty years ago [1], the engineering of microbial cells with the purpose of chemical detection has enormously expanded since [2-4]. The major driving force for this development has been the advance in genetic engineering techniques; the relative ease to redesign (certain) hardware components in microbial cells and to assemble synthetic genetic circuitry for sensing and producing robust output signals.…”

“…On the other hand, MBS are self-propagating entities and therefore relatively easy and cheap to produce. The fact that different MBS can be engineered, which solely differ in target recognition but otherwise have the same reporter output signal, may pave the way for sensing arrays while maintaining relatively simple detectors and devices [4] (box 1). The main important advantage for using MBS, however, that (for the time being) only cells themselves can provide is the integration of biological processes relevant to the target one would like to address.…”

A miniature porous aluminum oxide-based flow-cell for online water quality monitoring using bacterial sensor cells

“…To turn such bacterial strains into on-line biosensors, they need to be integrated into a hardware platform containing all the components essential for continuous flow, combined with a sensing device (Elad et al, 2008). Elad et al (2011) described a flow-through biosensor with disposable modular poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) chips, incorporating agar-immobilized bioluminescent recombinant reporter bacteria, with a continuous water flow for up to 10 days.…”