The Use of Insect Chemoreceptors for the Assembly of Biosensors Based on Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistors

Abstract

The extraordinary sensing abilities of insects have been well‐known for many years. The use of their sensitive organs in biosensors is of great interest. This article describes both the signal‐generating process inside the sensing organs and how to measure these signals in terms of technical sensing principles. Especially, EAG techniques and a novel BioFET (coupling between an insect antenna and a field‐effect transistor) set‐up are covered in detail. Possible applications of biosensors based on intact chemoreceptors are given and possible future developments in this area are discussed.

Recent advances in biologically sensitive field-effect transistors (BioFETs)

“…[212][213][214][215][216][217][218][219][220] In this approach, the voltage generated in the antenna upon detecting a certain odour is used to modify the drain current of the transitor. The responsible organ for smell, i.e.…”

“…Another application might be in an early fire alarm system: smouldering fires such a burning coal, paper and wood, can be detected by means of monitoring fire-specific odours (e.g., guaicol and 1-octen) using the same biosensor only with the antenna of a steelblue jewel beetle instead. 215,219 At present, the 'beetle/chip' biosensor is still at the development stage but it shows great promise for the future. The possible field of applications can be extended by employing various insect species with different sensitivity profiles.…”

Sequence matters – selective adaptation in electroantennographic response to binary odour mixtures by the Colorado potato beetle

“…Such concentrations had also been found in measurements by a portable EAG system and a Bio‐FET (Schütz et al. 1999, 2000; Schöning et al. 2000; Schütz and Weissbecker 2003) in an agricultural environment.…”

Olfaction on a chip

“…Cell-based sensing is gradually becoming practically feasible with advances in technology [10][11][12], bioengineering [13][14][15][16], and ligand-OR pairing [17]. A number of bioelectronic noses based on olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) have been developed [7,9,13,15,[18][19][20] to exploit the unmatched ability of biological systems for odor sensing, but miniaturization has been a significant hurdle due to the benchtop laboratory equipment and computers required for transduction and odorant identification [16]. Furthermore, it is infeasible to output hundreds of channels of analog waveforms (for electrode arrays each channel requires a dedicated bond-pad and a physical wire going to an external amplifier [21]), and extensive parallel data processing is required as the number of sensors grows [3].…”