Are luminescent bacteria suitable for online detection and monitoring of toxic compounds in drinking water and its sources?

Biosensors based on luminescent bacteria may be valuable tools to monitor the chemical quality and safety of surface and drinking water. In this review, an overview is presented of the recombinant strains available that harbour the bacterial luciferase genes luxCDABE, and which may be used in an online biosensor for water quality monitoring. Many bacterial strains have been described for the detection of a broad range of toxicity parameters, including DNA damage, protein damage, membrane damage, oxidative stress, organic pollutants, and heavy metals. Most lux strains have sensitivities with detection limits ranging from milligrams per litre to micrograms per litre, usually with higher sensitivities in compound-specific strains. Although the sensitivity of lux strains can be enhanced by various molecular manipulations, most reported detection thresholds are still too high to detect levels of individual contaminants as they occur nowadays in European drinking waters. However, lux strains sensing specific toxic effects have the advantage of being able to respond to mixtures of contaminants inducing the same effect, and thus could be used as a sensor for the sum effect, including the effect of compounds that are as yet not identified by chemical analysis. An evaluation of the suitability of lux strains for monitoring surface and drinking water is therefore provided

Use of Tunable Whole-Cell Bioreporters to Assess Bioavailable Cadmium and Remediation Performance in Soils

It is important to have tools to measure the bioavailability to assess the risks of pollutants because the bioavailability is defined as the portions of pollutants showing the biological effects on living organisms. This study described the construction of tunable Escherichia coli whole-cell bioreporter (WCB) using the promoter region of zinc-inducible operon and its application on contaminated soils. It was verified that this WCB system showed specific and sensitive responses to cadmium rather than zinc in the experimental conditions. It was inferred that Cd(II) associates stronger with ZntR, a regulatory protein of zinc-inducible operon, than other metal ions. Moreover, the expression of reporter genes, egfp and mcherry, were proportional to the concentration of cadmium, thereby being a quantitative sensor to monitor bioavailable cadmium. The capability to determine bioavailable cadmium was verified with Cd(II) amended LUFA soils, and then the applicability on environmental systems was investigated with field soils collected from smelter area in Korea before and after soil-washing. The total amount of cadmium was decreased after soil washing, while the bioavailability was increased. Consequently, it would be valuable to have tools to assess bioavailability and the effectiveness of soil remediation should be evaluated in the aspect of bioavailability as well as removal efficiency