Applications of Luminous Bacteria on Environmental Monitoring

P. Perego, L. Fanara, M. Zilli and M. Del Borghi

Abstract
The present study belongs to the field of “enviromental monitoring” and specifically refers to the natural biomarkers that are normally present in the seawater ecosystem: the luminous bacteria. The application of traditional macro-biomarkers (fishes, invertebrates; e.g.: mussel watching) represents an important integration to the classic laboratory methodologies, above all for the high sensitivity that can be reached. Unfortunately, these methods have some drawbacks due to the need of placement of the specimens in situ, the waiting time and the final processing with quite complicated analysis procedure. The luminous bacteria (e.g. Vibrio fischeri) and the correlated detection technologies, give a new promising method for assessing the water pollution, because they are: – easy to cultivate and preserve; – easy to be detected (the nowadays available luminosity detectors are highly sensitive); – endemic in sea or salty waterbodies; – applicable also to non salty waterbodies. Progresses can be made on the automatic devices that can handle and automize their use; this paper illustrates a prototype that may work on field in near-real-time, opening the way to future applications of along-the-path mapping and multitemporal comparison.

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Keywords
Bioluminescence, biomarkers, chemoluminescence, environmental and automatic monitoring, luminous bacteria, Vibrio fischeri