A Miniature Bioreactor for Sensing Toxicity Using Recombinant Bioluminescent Escherichia coli Cells

Abstract

A miniature bioreactor was fabricated as a contactor between biosensing cells and toxic materials. This miniature bioreactor (58 mL working volume) showed performance similar to that of a conventional bioreactor, as well as the advantages of easy installation, facile operation, and small medium requirements during long-term continuous operation. A performance evaluation measured the response to ethanol in continuous operation by using a recombinant bioluminescent Escherichia coli strain. Continuous cultures were repeatedly induced by the ethanol challenge. Steady-state cell concentrations (OD) were found to be decreased, the induced specific bioluminescence (SBL) peak value was found to be increased, and the peak response time, which is the time constant of this continuous monitoring system, was found to be decreased with increasing dilution rate. Finally on- and off-line bioluminescence monitoring was shown to be reliable, suggesting that this system is suitable for applications such as monitoring the influent and effluent streams of waste water biotreatment plants.

Chemostat-like microfluidic platform for highly sensitive detection of heavy metal ions using microbial biosensors

“…For example, Gu et al introduced a milliliter-scale bioreactor (58 mL working volume) that can be operated in a continuous and repeatable manner for testing toxic compounds in an aqueous solution. They found that higher growth rates and/or dilution rates enhanced the performance of microbial biosensors (Gu et al, 1996). Additionally, Charrier et al reported a bioreactor system with multiple wells that had a diameter of several millimeters and were connected in series.…”

“…In addition, GarciaAlonso et al (2011GarciaAlonso et al ( , 2009) prepared a microfluidic device that had several microchannels in parallel and could screen multiple toxic compounds or a single compound at different concentrations on a chip by using chemical gradients and recombinant yeast cells. These approaches combining a microbial biosensor and a miniaturized device/system provided many advantages, including small sample volume consumption and short analysis time (GarciaAlonso et al, 2011(GarciaAlonso et al, , 2009Rothert et al, 2005), high throughput (Charrier et al, 2011;Garcia-Alonso et al, 2011Rothert et al, 2005), and enhanced sensitivity and selectivity, compared to conventional methods (Gu et al, 1996;Rothert et al, 2005). However, most of these approaches appear to rely on conventional batch-mode culture environments.…”

In situ measurement of bioluminescence and fluorescence in an integrated microbioreactor

“…These approaches yield limited data since many growth parameters cannot be measured online in such systems. Alternatively, bioreactors are used when growth data is needed (DeLisa et al, 1999;Gu et al, 1996). However, this approach is both costly and time-consuming.…”

Bioassay of environmental endocrine disruptors TBT and DMSO using recombinant Escherichia coli

“…In wastewater treatment ,unknown chemicals toxic to biota are difficult to measure because the wastewater contains mixed unknown components. A method to detect potentially damaging toxic levels of multiple pollutants in incoming wastewater is required, especially for the development of an early warning system [7].…”