Applications and perspectives of bioelectronic nose

Abstract

Detection and discrimination of odorants has great potential for applications in various fields, such as the food industry, fragrance and flavor industry, environmental monitoring, and biomedical diagnosis. For several decades, many efforts have been made to control the process of food production and fragrance and flavor of brands, and to monitor environmental pollutions through the use of comparable technology. There have been several classical methods for these purposes. Conventional methods, such as GC/MS or human sensory panels (olfactometry), have been conventionally used, but they are expensive, labor-intensive, time-consuming and affected by large variations according to the conditions of analysis. These drawbacks increased the requirement for new technique, substituting classical methods, and the electronic nose has been developed over the past couple of decades. However, the electronic nose has also many limitations to be overcome. Recently, the bioelectronic nose, using biological components, has been developed. The bioelectronic nose has a bright prospect as a powerful and effective biosensing system, capable of detecting and discriminating a huge variety of odorant molecules. The most meaningful characteristics of the bioelectronic nose are that it mimics the human olfactory system. The bioelectronic nose is expected to replace the sensory evaluation method. It can be used for standardization of smell, development of code for each smell, and visualization of smell. Consequently, the development of the bioelectronic nose is expected to open up many new possibilities to improve the quality of our life.