Flow injection procedures for the determination of ethanol and alcohol dehydrogenase using co-immobilised bacterial luciferase and oxidoreductase

Chemiluminescence in drug assay

The phenomenon of chemiluminescence allows the development of simple analytical procedures using low cost instrumentation which can be easily controlled by computers. The sensitivity of the methods is excellent, and selectivity is improved by high-performance liquid chromatographic separation. A broad area of chemiluminometric applications is drug analysis, which is reviewed in this paper.

Software FIACRE: bioprocess monitoring on the basis of flow injection analysis using simultaneously a urea optode and a glucose luminescence sensor

Various computer programs for large-scale bioprocess control and optimization have been developed as well as software for simple laboratory routine analysis. In comparison, software can hardly be found that works on laboratory scale and provides the control of complex flow injection analysis (FIA) systems, multisubstrate determination, data evaluation as well as minimal process control abilities. The sensors applied can be of different type (luminometric or other optical as well as electrochemical biosensors). The development of such a software may be very helpful for the transfer of FIA/biosensor systems from the state of development to industrial processes. Hence, each analysing system--even a well established biosensor--has to be individually adapted to the process, a task which is best done under laboratory conditions. Such a flexible, computer-controlled FIA system for research level based on the software FIACRE is presented. Five FIA/(bio)sensor system can be controlled simultaneously. Additionally, common temperature and pH recordings are possible. Determinations of substrate concentrations are performed by means of calibration curves which can be recorded at different times. This allows supervising the activities of the sensors during a cell cultivation and controlling the bioprocess, e.g. by adding substrate to a cell culture. The automated monitoring of the degradation of glucose and urea by two different optical sensing principles during a cell cultivation under the control of one microcomputer is presented for the first time. For this purpose, already well examined biosensors (a urease optode and a luminometric glucose sensor) were employed and their properties discussed under the aspect of working in real cultivation media. It will also be shown that substrates being of interest for bioprocess control can be detected by slight modifications of known reactions. For example, substrates of NADH-dependent enzymatic reactions can be detected by the luminol chemiluminescence system, and optodes can be employed for pH, penicillin and glucose determination.

Clinical and biochemical applications of luciferases and luciferins

Recent advances in the analytical applications of bacterial and firefly luciferases and firefly luciferin are reviewed. Luciferases have been used in soluble and immobilized/co-immobilized forms in assays for a variety of enzymes, substrates, and cofactors. The firefly luciferase reaction forms the basis of rapid microbiological tests which have found application in susceptibility testing, detection of bacteriuria, activated sludge analysis, and food testing. Rapid microbiological assays are also possible using bacteriophages containing the lux genes from Virbrio harveyi. Both the firefly and the bacterial luciferase reaction have been applied in immunoassay and DNA probe assays and the firefly luciferin phosphate substrate for alkaline phosphatase labels has proven particularly successful.