Whole-cell microbial biosensors for heavy metals: design principles, optimization strategies, and monitoring applications

Abstract:

Heavy metal pollution has attracted increasing attention because of its toxicity, environmental persistence, bioaccumulation, and potential contribution to antibiotic resistance. The accurate, rapid, efficient, and sensitive detection of heavy metals in the environment is of great significance for environmental protection and human health. A whole-cell microbial biosensor (WCMB), integrating a biorecognition module and a signal processing module, provides a new strategy for heavy metal monitoring. Great progress has been achieved in the transcription factor-based WCMBs for the monitoring of heavy metals in recent years. This paper introduced the basic composition and design principles of WCMBs, summarized the construction and application of WCMBs for heavy metal detection that were developed in recent years, analyzed the optimization strategies of WCMBs by synthetic biology, and finally prospected the future research directions of WCMBs. This paper is expected to be an important reference for the effective prevention and control of heavy metal pollution in the environment.

Key words:heavy metals;whole-cell microbial biosensor;design;optimization;application