Special Issue "Live Cell-Based Sensors"
Quicklinks
A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Biosensors".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2012
Special Issue Editor
Guest Editor
Prof. Dr. Akiyoshi Taniguchi
1 Advanced Medical Materials Group, Biomaterials Center, National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), 1-1 Namiki, Tsukuba-shi Ibaraki, 305-004 Japan
2 Wased University-NIMS Joint Graduate Program, 1-1 Namiki, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan
Website: http://www.nims.go.jp/mana/people/mana_scientist/a_taniguchi/index.html
E-Mail: taniguchi.akiyoshi@nims.go.jp
Phone: +81-29-860-4505
Fax: +81-29-860-4714
Interests: cell- based biosensor; nanotoxicology; in vitro co-culture; microfluidics
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Living cells maintain life functions by responding quickly and with great sensitivity to changes in the external environment. Consequently, sensors using live cells are thought to be able to perform analyses faster and with more sensitivity than previously possible. Cell-based sensors can be roughly divided into two types. The first uses microorganisms such as Escherichia coli or yeast as sensing elements (Microbial cells). The second type uses human and animal cells (Mammalian cells). The first type can be cultivated rather easily and has the advantages of being inexpensive and portable. The second type is more complex but has the advantage of potentially being used with human subjects. Most research in this area is concentrated on the first type, microbial sensors, but research on sensors that use mammalian cells has recently become more widespread. Live cell-based sensors may potentially be used as an evaluation technology in medical and pharmaceutical fields, as well as for cytotoxicity inspection of medical supplies, nanomaterials, biomaterials, environmental factors and other materials. The special issue of the journal Sensors will cover these different types of live cell-based sensors and applications for these different fields.
Prof. Dr. Akiyoshi Taniguchi
Guest Editor
Submission
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. Papers will be published continuously (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are refereed through a peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sensors is an international peer-reviewed Open Access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs).
Keywords
- microbial cells
- mammalian cells
- biotechnology
- biosensor
- cell culture
- cytotoxicity
Published Papers (8 papers)
|
Received: 10 June 2011; in revised form: 8 July 2011 / Accepted: 12 July 2011 / Published: 18 July 2011
Show/Hide Abstract
| Download PDF Full-text (579 KB)
Abstract: The increasing use of nanomaterials in consumer and industrial products has aroused concerns regarding their fate in biological systems. An effective detection method to evaluate the safety of bio-nanomaterials is therefore very important. Titanium dioxide (TiO2), which is manufactured worldwide in large quantities for use in a wide range of applications, including pigment and cosmetic manufacturing, was once thought to be an inert material, but recently, more and more studies have indicated that TiO2 nanoparticles (TiO2 NPs) can cause inflammation and be harmful to humans by causing lung and brain problems. In order to evaluate the safety of TiO2 NPs for the environment and for humans, sensor cells for inflammation detection were developed, and these were transfected with the Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) gene and Nuclear Factor Kappa B (NF-κB) reporter gene. NF-κB as a primary cause of inflammation has received a lot of attention, and it can be activated by a wide variety of external stimuli. Our data show that TiO2 NPs-induced inflammation can be detected by our sensor cells through NF-κB pathway activation. This may lead to our sensor cells being used for bio-nanomaterial safety evaluation.
 |
|
Received: 2 September 2011; in revised form: 22 September 2011 / Accepted: 29 September 2011 / Published: 12 October 2011
Show/Hide Abstract
| Download PDF Full-text (1218 KB) | 
Abstract: This study demonstrates a novel cell manipulation microdevice for cell docking, culturing, cell-cell contact and interaction by microfluidic manipulation of heterogeneous cell suspensions. Heterogeneous cell suspensions include disparate blood cells of natural killer cells and leukemia cancer cells for immune cell transplantation therapy. However, NK cell alloreactivity from different healthy donors present various recovery response levels. Little is still known about the interactions and cytotoxicity effects between donor NK cells and recipient cancer cells. The cell-based micro device first showed the capability of cell docking, movement, contact and cell-cell interaction with respect to cell cytotoxicity of NK cells against cancer cells. With various flow tests for live cell loading, flow rates of 10 μL/h were chosen for injection in the central and side flows such that both types of suspension cells could be gently docked at the gap structure in a reaction zone. The trapping number of particles and cells was linearly proportional to the gap length. Finally, the cytotoxicity of around 40% was found to be similar in the case of dilute cells and a large cell population. As a result, the cell manipulation microdevice has been validated for live suspensions of natural killer and cancer cells, and exhibited the capability to measure the cytotoxicity of dilute cell suspensions.
|
|
Received: 29 November 2011; in revised form: 26 December 2011 / Accepted: 29 December 2011 / Published: 30 December 2011
Show/Hide Abstract
| Download PDF Full-text (660 KB) | View HTML Full-text | Download PMC-XML Full-text
Abstract: Many conventional biochemical assays are performed using populations of cells to determine their quantitative biomolecular profiles. However, population averages do not reflect actual physiological processes in individual cells, which occur either on short time scales or nonsynchronously. Therefore, accurate analysis at the single-cell level has become a highly attractive tool for investigating cellular content. Microfluidic chips with arrays of microwells were developed for single-cell chemical lysis in the present study. The cellular occupancy in 30-mm-diameter microwells (91.45%) was higher than that in 20-mm-diameter microwells (83.19%) at an injection flow rate of 2.8 mL/min. However, most of the occupied 20-mm-diameter microwells contained individual cells. The results of chemical lysis experiments at the single-cell level indicate that cell membranes were gradually lysed as the lysis buffer was injected; they were fully lysed after 12 s. Single-cell chemical lysis was demonstrated in the proposed microfluidic chip, which is suitable for high-throughput cell lysis.
|
|
Received: 26 November 2011; in revised form: 30 December 2011 / Accepted: 9 January 2012 / Published: 11 January 2012
Show/Hide Abstract
| Download PDF Full-text (749 KB) | View HTML Full-text | Download PMC-XML Full-text
Abstract: The bacterial luciferase gene cassette (lux) is unique among bioluminescent bioreporter systems due to its ability to synthesize and/or scavenge all of the substrate compounds required for its production of light. As a result, the lux system has the unique ability to autonomously produce a luminescent signal, either continuously or in response to the presence of a specific trigger, across a wide array of organismal hosts. While originally employed extensively as a bacterial bioreporter system for the detection of specific chemical signals in environmental samples, the use of lux as a bioreporter technology has continuously expanded over the last 30 years to include expression in eukaryotic cells such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae and even human cell lines as well. Under these conditions, the lux system has been developed for use as a biomedical detection tool for toxicity screening and visualization of tumors in small animal models. As the technologies for lux signal detection continue to improve, it is poised to become one of the first fully implantable detection systems for intra-organismal optical detection through direct marriage to an implantable photon-detecting digital chip. This review presents the basic biochemical background that allows the lux system to continuously autobioluminesce and highlights the important milestones in the use of lux-based bioreporters as they have evolved from chemical detection platforms in prokaryotic bacteria to rodent-based tumorigenesis study targets. In addition, the future of lux imaging using integrated circuit microluminometry to image directly within a living host in real-time will be introduced and its role in the development of dose/response therapeutic systems will be highlighted.
|
|
Received: 21 December 2011; in revised form: 13 January 2012 / Accepted: 13 January 2012 / Published: 18 January 2012
Show/Hide Abstract
| Download PDF Full-text (186 KB) | View HTML Full-text | Download PMC-XML Full-text
Abstract: Cell-based biosensing is a “smart” way to obtain efficacy-information on the effect of applied chemical on cellular biological cascade. We have proposed an engineered post-synapse model cell-based biosensors to investigate the effects of chemicals on ionotropic glutamate receptor (GluR), which is a focus of attention as a molecular target for clinical neural drug discovery. The engineered model cell has several advantages over native cells, including improved ease of handling and better reproducibility in the application of cell-based biosensors. However, in general, cell-based biosensors often have low signal-to-noise (S/N) ratios due to the low level of cellular responses. In order to obtain a higher S/N ratio in model cells, we have attempted to design a tactic model cell with elevated cellular response. We have revealed that the increase GluR expression level is not directly connected to the amplification of cellular responses because the saturation of surface expression of GluR, leading to a limit on the total ion influx. Furthermore, coexpression of GluR with a voltage-gated potassium channel increased Ca2+ ion influx beyond levels obtained with saturating amounts of GluR alone. The construction of model cells based on strategy of amplifying ion flux per individual receptors can be used to perform smart cell-based biosensing with an improved S/N ratio.
|
|
Received: 1 December 2011; in revised form: 13 January 2012 / Accepted: 17 January 2012 / Published: 1 February 2012
Show/Hide Abstract
| Download PDF Full-text (1072 KB) | View HTML Full-text | Download PMC-XML Full-text
Abstract: Sensors and multi-sensor arrays are the basis of new technologies for the non-label monitoring of cell activity. In this paper we show that choroid plexus cells can be cultured on silicon chips and that sensors register in real time changes in their activity, constituting an interesting experimental paradigm for cell biology and medical research. To validate the signals recorded (metabolism = peri-cellular acidification, oxygen consumption = respiration; impedance = adhesion, cell shape and motility) we performed experiments with compounds that act in a well-known way on cells, influencing these parameters. Our in vitro model demonstrates the advantages of multi-sensor arrays in assessment and experimental characterization of dynamic cellular events—in this case in choroid plexus functions, however with applicability to other cell types as well.
|
|
Received: 29 December 2011; in revised form: 24 January 2012 / Accepted: 3 February 2012 / Published: 6 February 2012
Show/Hide Abstract
| Download PDF Full-text (676 KB) | View HTML Full-text | Download PMC-XML Full-text
Abstract: Initially described in 1990, Pseudomonas fluorescens HK44 served as the first whole-cell bioreporter genetically endowed with a bioluminescent (luxCDABE) phenotype directly linked to a catabolic (naphthalene degradative) pathway. HK44 was the first genetically engineered microorganism to be released in the field to monitor bioremediation potential. Subsequent to that release, strain HK44 had been introduced into other solids (soils, sands), liquid (water, wastewater), and volatile environments. In these matrices, it has functioned as one of the best characterized chemically-responsive environmental bioreporters and as a model organism for understanding bacterial colonization and transport, cell immobilization strategies, and the kinetics of cellular bioluminescent emission. This review summarizes the characteristics of P. fluorescens HK44 and the extensive range of its applications with special focus on the monitoring of bioremediation processes and biosensing of environmental pollution.
|
|
Received: 1 February 2012; in revised form: 28 February 2012 / Accepted: 5 March 2012 / Published: 8 March 2012
Show/Hide Abstract
| Download PDF Full-text (5449 KB) | View HTML Full-text | Download PMC-XML Full-text
Abstract: Pollution of drinking water sources represents a continuously emerging problem in global environmental protection. Novel techniques for real-time monitoring of water quality, capable of the detection of unanticipated toxic and bioactive substances, are urgently needed. In this study, the applicability of a cell-based sensor system using selected eukaryotic cell lines for the detection of aquatic pollutants is shown. Readout parameters of the cells were the acidification (metabolism), oxygen consumption (respiration) and impedance (morphology) of the cells. A variety of potential cytotoxic classes of substances (heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, neurotoxins, waste water) was tested with monolayers of L6 cells (rat myoblasts). The cytotoxicity or cellular effects induced by inorganic ions (Ni2+ and Cu2+) can be detected with the metabolic parameters acidification and respiration down to 0.5 mg/L, whereas the detection limit for other substances like nicotine and acetaminophen are rather high, in the range of 0.1 mg/L and 100 mg/L. In a close to application model a real waste water sample shows detectable signals, indicating the existence of cytotoxic substances. The results support the paradigm change from single substance detection to the monitoring of overall toxicity.
|
Last update: 18 May 2012
