Pharmacom has great interest of developing microbiological biosensors on respiratory basis for the measurement of the following environmentally relevant compounds: inorganic N-compounds, heavy metals, organic xenobiotics and the estimation of sum parameters or so-called complex parameters such as BOD, ADOC, N-BOD, and the inhibition of nitrification

We intend to prototype a microbial system for the point-of-care and diagnostics market. The microbial biosensor consists of a transducer in conjunction with immobilized viable or non-viable microbial cells. Non-viable cells obtained after permeabilization or whole cells containing periplasmic enzymes have mostly been used as an economical substitute for enzymes. Viable cells make use of the respiratory and metabolic functions of the cell, the analyte to be monitored being either a substrate or an inhibitor of these processes. Bioluminescence-based microbial biosensors can also be developed using genetically engineered microorganisms constructed by fusing the lux gene with an inducible gene promoter for toxicity and bioavailability testing.