PARENT SESSION
Organized Oral Session 38: Sensors and sensor networks in ecology
Organizer(s): SD Wullschleger, RB Jackson, and TE Dawson
Wednesday, August 10, 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM, Meeting Room 516 A, Level 5, Palais des congrès de Montréal

Microbiosensors and miniaturized enzyme-based sensors for soils research.

Cardon, Zoe^*,1, Gage, Daniel¹, Herron, Patrick¹, Moussy, Francis², ¹ University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT² University of South Florida, Tampa, FL

ABSTRACT- Organismal responses to and interactions with the environment are challenging to study belowground. Processes are embedded in soil out of sight, organisms of interest that drive many key ecosystem functions are extraordinarily small, and the structure of the soil itself is critical to organismal function and interactions. Certainly, valuable signatures of physico-chemical and organismal activities belowground are currently provided by nondestructive assays of gas fluxes and leached nutrients, coupled with destructive assays of soil microbial activities. Can sensors be developed to complement these established techniques, continuously reporting, from within functioning soil, concentrations of soluble or gaseous molecules within cycling pathways? Can strategies be developed for monitoring microenvironments at microbial spatial scales that are unfamiliar to us, as well as for observing the responses of microbes themselves to those microenvironments? We are developing two sensor types -- living microbiosensors and enzyme-based, nonliving miniaturized sensors -- to begin exploring organismal interactions in and with soils, and the processes controlled by those organisms. Living microbiosensors can report environmental conditions and resource availability at microbial spatial scales, as well as microbial response to those resources and conditions. Enzyme-based, non-living, miniaturized sensors rely on the selectivity of enzymes to monitor specific solute concentrations. Each of these approaches has limitations, yet each also promises to provide a continuous, nondestructive glimpse of belowground activities otherwise inaccessible using common techniques in soil ecology.

Key words: Microbiosensors, Enzyme, Soil