TRENDS IN BIOSENSOR DEVELOPMENT AND SOME POTENTIAL APPLICATIONS

Biosensors comprise an interdisciplinary field of research and develop ment They are based on the coupling of a bioactive receptor, which is responsible for the specific recognition of the species of interest, a nd a physico-chemical transducer, that converts the biochemical recogn ition step into a quantifiable electronic or optical signal. Recent de velopments in sensor technology and biochemistry have provided the mea ns to develop biosensors as portable measurement devices and to simpli fy biochemical analysis on both micro and macro scales. The biosensor approach, which is amenable to mass production and multi-parameter sen sing, implies the use of relatively low cost instrumentation for in si tu or on-line measurements, avoiding the need to carry out sampling st eps. Taking these properties into consideration, a host of clinical, e nvironmental and industrial applications, based on the highly specific and sensitive detection of biological substances, can be envisaged.