Abstract

A WIDE REVIEW ON HUMAN BIOSENSORS AND ITS APPLICATIONS

M. N. Anjana*, Sajid S. Sajudeen, Gifty Jose, Besty Antony and Anjali Krishnan R.

ABSTRACT

As the potential threat of bioterrorism increases, there is great need for a tool that can quick, reliably and accurately detect contaminating bio-agents in the atmosphere. Biosensing elements are a set of biological entity, those that are capable of carrying out specific group reactions or can bind with particular group of compounds, to yield a detectable signal that is read and transformed by the transducers. There are mainly three so called generations of biosensors; First generation biosensors where the normal product of the reaction diffuses to the transducer and causes the electrical response, second generation biosensors which involve specific mediators between the reaction and the transducer in order to generate improved response, and third generation biosensors where the reaction itself causes the response and no product or mediator diffusion is directly involved. Biosensors have many uses in clinical analysis, general health care monitoring. Medically, biosensors can be used for accurate and precise detection of tumors, pathogens, elevated blood glucose levels in diabetic patients and other toxins etc. Cells have the ability to modify as per the surrounding environment for which they are subjected to use as biosensing component. Adhesiveness to surface is another characteristic advantage that make it is suitable candidate for immobilization on the matrix surface and attachment of receptors on cell membrane. They are often used in monitoring treatment effect of drugs, toxic level, drugs of different stress factors and organic derivatives. This review mainly focused on the types of biosensors and application of various biosensors in different fields. Biosensors based on ELISA have also been developed using labelled antibody or labelled antigen coupled with a suitable transducer. In this case mostly the biosensors can be employed to detect the bioterrorist attacks like the intentional use of the biological entities like Bacillus anthracic, Ebola, hepatitis C virus etc.

Keywords: Biosensors, Types of biosensors, Applications.