3. Conclusions and future avenues
Analysis of published literature has shown that despite
the great R&D effort spent on developing biosensors
in the last years, only a few biosensors for bacterial
detection are commercially available or are approaching
commercialization. The main reasons for this are
both technology and market related. It is a challenge to
create biosensors with the necessary properties for reliable
and effective use in routine applications. The
biosensor system must have the specificity to distinguish
the target bacteria in a multi-organism matrix, the
adaptability to detect different analytes, the sensitivity
to detect bacteria directly, on-line without preenrichment
and the rapidity to give real-time results. At the
same time, the biosensor must have relatively simple
and inexpensive configurations. Another obstacle is the
tendency to focus only on the scientific basis of the
technology while excluding the other equally important
aspects. Research usually proceeds without a defined
specification that is adhered to. There are a number of
practical and technical issues which must be overcome
in the development of bacterial biosensors for their
commercialization. Table 4 illustrates the typical features
of the ‘ideal’ biosensor. There is no biosensor
system-to date-that has a bacterial specificty as that of
the plate culture method, which is one of the crucial
requirements of todays market. Obviously, enhancing
the specificty of biosensor systems and incorporation of
all the features in Table 4 within one bacterial biosensor
device is a very complicated task.