Disposable organic fluorescence biosensor for water pollution monitoring.
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Disposable organic fluorescence biosensor for water pollution monitoring. Florent Lefèvre1, Luping Yu2, Vamsy Chodavarapu3, Philippe Juneau4 and Ricardo Izquierdo1 1 Department of Computer Science, Resmiq, NanoQAM, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montréal, QC, H3C 3P8, CANADA. 2 Department of Chemistry and the James Franck Institute, The University of Chicago, 929 E. 57th Street, Chicago, Illinois 60637, U.S.A. 3 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Resmiq, McGill University, 3480 University St., Room 642, Montréal, QC, H3A 2A7, CANADA. 4 Department of biology, TOXEN, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montréal, QC, H3C 3P8, CANADA ABSTRACT We report the first disposable fluorescent biosensor based on algae, with an organic light emitting diode and an organic photodetector (OPD) miniaturized into a microfluidic chip. A DPVBi OLED was used as the excitation source, while a blend of PTB3/PCBM was used for the organic photodetector. The fluorescence biosensor is integrated in a microfluidic chip made from polymeric materials such as (poly)dimethylsiloxane (PDMS), which is transparent, biocompatible and can easily be processed by conventional lithography. The complete detector is designed to detect Chlamydomonas reinhardtii green algae fluorescence in the microfluidic chamber. Algal chlorophyll fluorescence is a physiological parameter routinely used to measure the photochemical efficiency of PSII. This measurement is a reliable and non-invasive method to determine the toxicity of pollutants like herbicides and metals. INTRODUCTION The use of unicellular microorganisms like algae or bacteria has already proven to be very useful to evaluate water toxicity [1]. Algae are very sensitive to any stress even under small concentration. Because a large number of pollutants affect the photosystem activity, photosynthesis inhibition is a good indicator that rapidly reflects the toxic effect of pollutants [2]. Thus, an algal biosensor would be sensitive enough to precisely detect the presence of pollutant and could be used as an easy and cost efficient way to effectuate a qualitative prescreen test onsite. Fluorescence is a sensitive and reliable method to measure algal photosynthesis inhibition [3]. Thus, fluorescence detection could allow us to fulfill the actual demand, which consists of a portable and disposable test that can be used to monitor water quality on-site. However, no solution of integration for such fluorescence detector suitable for on-site measurements has been proposed up to now. It has recently been shown that the use of organic devices combined with microfluidic technology is a viable solution to integrate an optical sensor [4, 5]. In this work, we present an approach to integrate a fluorescence biosensor on a microfluidic platform. The fluorescence sensor is dedicated to measure whole cell algal and cyanobacterial fluorescence. In the case of these unicellular cells, light energy absorbed by chlorophyll complex molecules in PSII is firstly used for photosynthesis, while the excess energy is dissi
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