Diseño de un instrumento portátil para aplicaciones ambientales por mediciones amperométricas sobre material biológico

El instrumento portátil optimizado para las medidas  de amperometria, en el monitoreo de  materiales bioactivos ha sido diseñado, fabricado y probado. Expresamente ha sido diseñado, para funcionar con una amplia gama de bio-muestras foto-activas. La cámara  de medición del instrumento; destaca dos tipos de fuentes ópticas para detectar la actividad fotosintética de plantas (p. ej. spinacia oleracea) y microorganismos (p. ej. algas y cyanobacteria). En la cámara son inseridos los electrodos serigrafiados para medir la corriente fotogenerada, ademas cuenta con un sistema de flujo para el transporte del electrólito. La transferencia fotosintética de electrones, es activada por dos LEDs (470nm y 660nm de emisión), para permitir varias longitudes de onda de excitación para utilizarlos con diversos materiales biológicos. El objetivo de la aplicacion, es en campos como agroalimentario, farmacéutico y biomédico. Este Artículo describe algunas de las posibles aplicaciones ambientales ABSTRACT A portable instrument performing amperometric measurements for monitoring bioactive materials has been designed, manufactured and tested. It has been specifically designed to operate with a wide range of photoactive biosamples. The sensing chamber in the instrument features two different optical sources to detect the photosynthetical activity of plants (i.e. spinacia oleracea) and microorganisms (i.e. algae and cyanobacteria). The chamber is provided with screen-printed electrodes to measure the photogenerated current and with a fluidic system for the electrolyte transport. Photosynthetic electron transfer is activated by two LEDs (470nm and 660nm emission) in order to enable various excitation wavelengths and match several different biological materials. Target applications belong to the agro-food, pharmaceutical and biomedical fields. This paper describes some possible environmental application

Sensing photosynthetic herbicides in an electrochemical flow cell

Specific inhibitory reactions of herbicides with photosynthetic reaction centers bound to working electrodes were monitored in a conventional electrochemical cell and a newly designed microfluidic electrochemical flow cell. In both cases, the bacterial reaction centers were bound to a transparent conductive metal oxide, indium-tin-oxide, electrode through carbon nanotubes. In the conventional cell, photocurrent densities of up to a few muA/cm2 could be measured routinely. The photocurrent could be blocked by the photosynthetic inhibitor terbutryn (I 50 = 0.38 +/- 0.14 muM) and o-phenanthroline (I 50 = 63.9 +/- 12.2 muM). The microfluidic flow cell device enabled us to reduce the sample volume and to simplify the electrode arrangement. The useful area of the electrodes remained the same (ca. 2 cm2), similar to the classical electrochemical cell; however, the size of the cell was reduced considerably. The microfluidic flow control enabled us monitoring in real time the binding/unbinding of the inhibitor and cofactor molecules at the secondary quinone site