Team:ITB Indonesia/BehindTheScene/WhyWholeCellBiosensor

Accuracy and rapidity in monitoring toxin compounds, pollutants, or the presence of a pathogen in the environment became an important point from a measuring device (sensor). In the process of monitoring a toxin or pollutant compounds, the conventional methods such as HPLC, GCMS, TLC isn't practical to use and can only be used in the laboratory. So the presence of  biosensor that utilizes biomolecule compounds as the recognition tools is more prefered than conventional method. Biomoleculs as recognition tool will interact with environmental factors to produce an outputs that will be converted into electrical signal or optical signal as the result from the measurement.

Enzymes are one of the biomolecule that can be used as a recognition tool, the specificity to the substrate provides a high accuracy for a biosensor device. However, the needs of high purity level, causing a high cost to production biosensor. In addition, as a macromolecule, enzyme stability is very less to be used as a biosensor device. So the use of whole cell biosensor is more advantageous in terms of both economically and in terms of ease of manufacture. The presence  a living cell as biosensor will automatically regulate the introduction of a critical environmental point for a biosensor. So a whole cell biosensor is more prefered and more advantageous as biosensor device