Team:USP-Brazil/Problem

The Challenge

The commercialization of “non-standard”, or simply adulterated alcoholic beverages, despite being a neglected topic in Brazil, is an increasing risk in leisure events [15]. An estimate by the World Health Organization (WHO) suggests that about 30% of the alcoholic drinks sold in the world are not registered, reaching two-thirds of all the consumption in India, and shocking 90% in East Africa [15]. It is a global issue that has raised the concern of international organizations as ICAP and Amphora Project. Methanol is one of the most common contaminants found in alcoholic drinks, able to provoke serious health disturbances, from metabolic acidosis to neurological problems. In large-fscale, a cheap and efficient methanol detector would undoubtedly help save millions of lives.

Detection of chemical compounds has always been one of the goals of Chemistry. In spite of all the progress allowed by technological developments in analytical chemistry, like gas chromatography [1] and ionization flame detection [2], such a task remains largely unreachable for those without access to highly specific equipment. That is the case of methanol contamination in “non-standard” (adulterated) beverage, where one has to opt between heavy machinery or purely chemical methods—that is, those without the specific equipment - that are usually very elaborate and expensive [3]. It is also possible to use biochemical sensors [4], but those also lack accessibility, due to the usage of enzymes, as well as other expensive reagents, such as ubiquinone or luminol.

The greatest advantage of a biochemical sensor could be, in addition to accessibility and easy use, its production: once the microorganism that has been modified to act as a detector is built, cell culture growth is itself responsible for producing the detector. Not only that simplifies the process, but it also reduces its cost: the only expenses after the development and construction of the biosensor would be with culture media and with preparing the product (e.g. lyophilization).

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References