Algae to design biosensors
Résumé
Unicellular algae are ubiquitous organisms found in all aquatic environments (land and sea). They are very sensitive to numerous families of pollutants that they have the capacity to accumulate. Thus, these algae are organisms of choice in the design of biosensors constituting excellent early warning tools capable of detecting the presence of deleterious substances in aquatic environments. We present here a synthesis of studies on several types of algal sensors made in the last ten years with different algal species (freshwater or marine) immobilized by physical or chemical techniques. The biological signals considered are of various natures (enzymatic activities, oxygen production, fluorescence emission). These different tools have different specificities interests and performances that will be analyzed and discussed.