Periodic Reporting for period 1 - BIOIMPROVE (Improvement of food safety applied biosensors by protein engineering)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2019-05-01 al 2021-04-30
BIOIMPROVE aims to develop an improved and highly sensitive portable biosensing device for the quantification of histamine in the lower concentration range (<5 mg/l). Such device is expected to ensure histamine contamination to be identified at all stages of the food chain, ultimately guaranteeing food safety for European consumers.
Overall, her work has resulted in new enzyme production procedures that were successfully implemented at BIOLAN significantly reducing the cost and time for biosensor manufacturing. Moreover, she has designed a promising solution for the caffeine determination in the food sector. Although the COVID-19 crisis has provided some difficulties for presenting the project outcomes, the main results were presented using social media tools, BIOLAN web page, a research-poster, seminars and public engagement events. Most importantly, the application of the new histamine enzyme to the portable biosensor for detecting histamine has led to the launch of a new generation of the portable biosensor. In this new version of the biosensor, apart from the applied enzyme with improved yield, a higher sensitivity and the miniaturization of the electronics was achieved and also connectivity with a cloud platform was enabled. The launching was promoted in different media:
https://mmaingenieria.es/biolan-lanza-un-biosensor-de-analisis-con-herramientas-de-digitalizacion/
https://parke.eus/es/bio-7000-el-innovador-dispositivo-de-analisis-de-biolan-portatil-versatil-e-inteligente-que-revolucionara-el-control-analitico/
The improvements obtained on the histamine biosensor are not patentable or publishable. However, this project has increased the value of the company in terms of its IPR. Apart from this, the patentability of the proposed solution for caffeine quantification is being evaluated.
Apart from this, other enzyme based biosensors were improved or developed for sulphite and caffeine quantification. The new sulphite oxidase obtained by the expression system developed during this project was tested on the biosensor platform with excellent results. Currently, this new enzyme production protocol for biosensor manufacturing is being validated, and is expected to replace the previous one before the end of this year, resulting in a significantly reduction of the cost of the strips associated to this biosensor. In the case of the caffeine biosensor, the enzymes needed for caffeine detection were identified and produced in active forms. At this moment, their application on a biosensor platform is under investigation. Caffeine quantification in beverages is time consuming and requires expensive laboratory equipment and skilled personnel. The new strategy designed provides a promising solution for caffeine quantification in the food sector.