An overview on bioreporter development for pollution monitoring.

Bioreporters are live natural or genetically engineered, bacteria, cyanobacteria, yeast, plant, or mammalian cells that produce signals in response to a specific environment. The generated signals could be measured and used as a sensor to detect and monitor target chemical or physical agents. The recombinant DNA technology is employed to design a bioreporter cell of choice, which mainly involves the fusion of a reporter gene with a promoter gene, activated by some environmental stimulus or set of genes to produce a variety of distinguishable signal that denotes the presence of a chemical or physical agent. The commonly used reporter genes are bioluminescent luciferase (lux or luc), green fluorescent protein, aequorin, and β-galactosidase (lacZ), which is a colorimetric signa l ling element. The bioreporters must remain viable in a range of environmental testing regimes when introduced. They can be deployed for rapid, easy, and economical detection, and in some cases, real-time to nearly real-time measurement potential, thus providing a promising aspect in the detection and removal of environmental pollutants. This review focuses on the principles, mechanisms, and performance of various bioreporters and the advancements made in applications of bioreporter in managing the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]