Giorgi Shtenberg
Agricultural Research Organization, Volcani Center, Israel
Title: Water bodies pollutants screening by nanostructured optical biosensors
Biography
Biography: Giorgi Shtenberg
Abstract
This work presents a generic integrated biosensing platform for real-time optical monitoring of heavy metal pollutants in water bodies by enzymatic activity inhibition. Optical studies exhibit high specificity and sensitivity towards three metal ions (Ag+>Pb2+>Cu2+), with a detection limit of 56 ppb. Additionally, we demonstrate detection and quantification of metal pollutants in real water samples (e.g. surface and ground water) with results comparable with gold standard analytical techniques, such as inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES). The main advantage of the presented biosensing concept is the ability to detect heavy metal ions, at environmentally relevant concentrations, using a simple and portable experimental setup, while the specific biosensor design can be tailored by varying the enzyme type.