Bioluminescent Microbial Bioreporters: A Personal Perspective

Abstract

This review attempts to summarize my three decades-long involvement in, and contribution to, the design, construction and testing of bioluminescent microbial sensor strains (bioreporters). With the understanding that such a document cannot be completely free of bias, the review focuses on studies from my own lab only, with almost no coverage of the parallel progress made by others in similar fields. This admittedly subjective approach by no way detracts from the achievements of countless excellent researchers who are not mentioned here, and whose contributions to the field are at least as important as that of my own. The review covers basic aspects of microbial sensor design, and then progresses to describe approaches to performance improvement of sensor strains aimed at the detection of either specific chemicals, groups of chemicals sharing similar characteristics, or global effects, such as toxicity and genotoxicity. The need for integration of live sensor cells into a compatible hardware platform is highlighted, as is the importance of long-term maintenance of the cells' viability and activity. The use of multi-member sensors' panels is presented as a means for enhancing the detection spectrum and sample "fingerprinting", along with a list of different purposes to which such sensors have been put to use.

Keywords: bioluminescence; bioreporters; environmental monitoring; genotoxicity; toxicity; whole-cell biosensors.

Figure 1

A schematic representation of the basic components of a genetically engineered bioreporter: a sensing element determining the type of chemicals sensed; a reporting element determining the nature of the output signal; and the host cell.

Figure 2

DNT-sensing bioreporters encapsulated in alginate beads spread over an uneven test field (A) and over a container harboring an anti-personnel mine buried in sand ((B), bar = 5 cm). Images taken at night with a Sony α7SII camera equipped with a Sony FE 28 mm f/2 lens (F = 2, ISO = 5000, Exposure = 6 s). Image in panel A is by Etai Shpigel, and in panel B is from [15].