Yeast-based systems for environmental control

Abstract

A wide range of dangerous pollutants, namely, heavy and transition metals, volatile toxicants, pesticides, plasticizers, pharmaceuticals, and natural and synthetic hormones, have to be tested in different environmental media to predict potential hazard for humans and nature as well to control the effectiveness of wastewater treatment. A lot of physicochemical analytical approaches have been developed, but they are not suitable for high-throughput control of chemicals in environmental samples. To support environmental safety, microbial analytical systems are considered to be very promising. In this review, the main achievements in the elaboration of analytical systems based on yeast cells for environmental monitoring of toxic pollutants are described, and perspectives of their implementation are discussed.