Defence Science Journal
  • Year: 2007
  • Volume: 57
  • Issue: 3

Biosensors for Biological Warfare Agent Detection

  • Author:
  • Miroslav Pohanka1,2, Petr Skládal2, Michal Kroèa1
  • Total Page Count: 9
  • Page Number: 185 to 193

1Centre of Biological Defence, Central Military Institute of Health, Techonín, Czech Republic.

2Department of Biochemistry, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic.

Abstract

Biological warfare agents (BWA) such as Bacillus anthracis, Francisella tularensis, Yersinia pestis or butulotoxin represent one of possibilities exploitable by military or terrorists. Rapid detection of BWA is one of the most important presumptions prerequisities for successful defence against them. The detection devices–biosensors–can be divided according to their physicochemical transducers to electrochemical, optical, and piezoelectric groups. A comparison of classical detection methods with biosensors is also given.

Keywords

Biosensors, optical biosensors, electrochemical biosensors, piezoelectric biosensors, biological warfare agents