Women's Special Issue Series: Biosensors

A special issue of Bioengineering (ISSN 2306-5354).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 October 2023) | Viewed by 15410

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Laboratorio de Medios e Interfases (LAMEIN), DBI, FACET, Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Av. Independencia 1800, Tucumán 4000, Argentina
Interests: biosensors and bioelectronics; microfluidics; nanotechnology and nanobiosensors; electrochemical impedance spectroscopy
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Not many people know that the first person to win two Nobel Prizes was Marie Curie, or that three African-American women were essential for the man to reach the moon thanks to her calculations. We can give numerous examples of this kind in all areas of science. The role of women was fundamental in many areas for the achievement of numerous advances that we can now consider as current.

Everybody knows that, according to UNESCO, less than 30% of researchers worldwide are women. However, there are no predetermined roles in science based on gender. Women can get to play any role they want in science, engineering, politics, the arts, and humanities. Therefore, one of the most efficient ways to make this known and to break gender biases in science is to show what the work of women scientists is, and their contribution to the construction of knowledge. Making visible what women are doing is fundamental, showing that we have been part of scientific knowledge throughout history. Today's society faces increasingly complex global challenges, and technology and science have become key tools to respond to many of these challenges. We cannot afford to do without half the population to solve them. The inclusion of women in science makes it possible to take advantage of their full potential, talent, and knowledge.

In the area of biosensors, there are many scientists that develop interesting sensors, and contribute to science with their studies and new analytical and control systems. This Special Edition intends to show the excellent work of women scientists in the area of biosensors, and hopes to show the great work and innovation potential of women in this area.

We invite and encourage women scientists in the field of biosensors to submit their contributions to this Special Issue. We welcome submissions from all authors, irrespective of gender.

Dr. Rossana Madrid
Guest Editor

Women’s Special Issue Series

This Special Issue is part of Bioengineering's Women’s Special Issue Series, hosted by women editors for women researchers. The Series advocates the advancement of women in science. We invite contributions to the Special Issue whose lead authors identify as women. The submission of articles with all-women authorship is especially encouraged. However, we do welcome articles from all authors, irrespective of gender.

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Published Papers (6 papers)

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Editorial

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4 pages, 184 KiB  
Editorial
Women in Biosensors Science
by Rossana E. Madrid
Bioengineering 2023, 10(5), 603; https://doi.org/10.3390/bioengineering10050603 - 18 May 2023
Viewed by 1202
Abstract
From the first glucose biosensor from Updike and Hicks (1968), there was an explosion of research in biosensors for detecting a wide range of analytes [...] Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Women's Special Issue Series: Biosensors)

Research

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18 pages, 4113 KiB  
Article
Spatiotemporal Modeling of Grip Forces Captures Proficiency in Manual Robot Control
by Rongrong Liu, John Wandeto, Florent Nageotte, Philippe Zanne, Michel de Mathelin and Birgitta Dresp-Langley
Bioengineering 2023, 10(1), 59; https://doi.org/10.3390/bioengineering10010059 - 3 Jan 2023
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 1849
Abstract
New technologies for monitoring grip forces during hand and finger movements in non-standard task contexts have provided unprecedented functional insights into somatosensory cognition. Somatosensory cognition is the basis of our ability to manipulate and transform objects of the physical world and to grasp [...] Read more.
New technologies for monitoring grip forces during hand and finger movements in non-standard task contexts have provided unprecedented functional insights into somatosensory cognition. Somatosensory cognition is the basis of our ability to manipulate and transform objects of the physical world and to grasp them with the right amount of force. In previous work, the wireless tracking of grip-force signals recorded from biosensors in the palm of the human hand has permitted us to unravel some of the functional synergies that underlie perceptual and motor learning under conditions of non-standard and essentially unreliable sensory input. This paper builds on this previous work and discusses further, functionally motivated, analyses of individual grip-force data in manual robot control. Grip forces were recorded from various loci in the dominant and non-dominant hands of individuals with wearable wireless sensor technology. Statistical analyses bring to the fore skill-specific temporal variations in thousands of grip forces of a complete novice and a highly proficient expert in manual robot control. A brain-inspired neural network model that uses the output metric of a self-organizing pap with unsupervised winner-take-all learning was run on the sensor output from both hands of each user. The neural network metric expresses the difference between an input representation and its model representation at any given moment in time and reliably captures the differences between novice and expert performance in terms of grip-force variability.Functionally motivated spatiotemporal analysis of individual average grip forces, computed for time windows of constant size in the output of a restricted amount of task-relevant sensors in the dominant (preferred) hand, reveal finger-specific synergies reflecting robotic task skill. The analyses lead the way towards grip-force monitoring in real time. This will permit tracking task skill evolution in trainees, or identify individual proficiency levels in human robot-interaction, which represents unprecedented challenges for perceptual and motor adaptation in environmental contexts of high sensory uncertainty. Cross-disciplinary insights from systems neuroscience and cognitive behavioral science, and the predictive modeling of operator skills using parsimonious Artificial Intelligence (AI), will contribute towards improving the outcome of new types of surgery, in particular the single-port approaches such as NOTES (Natural Orifice Transluminal Endoscopic Surgery) and SILS (Single-Incision Laparoscopic Surgery). Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Women's Special Issue Series: Biosensors)
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12 pages, 2448 KiB  
Article
A Highly Sensitive Urinary Exosomal miRNAs Biosensor Applied to Evaluation of Prostate Cancer Progression
by Yueh-Er Chiou, Kai-Jie Yu, Sow-Neng Pang, Yan-Lin Yang, See-Tong Pang and Wen-Hui Weng
Bioengineering 2022, 9(12), 803; https://doi.org/10.3390/bioengineering9120803 - 14 Dec 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1916
Abstract
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in the male population, carrying a significant disease burden. PSA is a widely available screening tools for this disease. Current screen-printed carbon electrode (SPCE)-based biosensors use a two-pronged probe approach to capture urinary miRNA. We were [...] Read more.
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in the male population, carrying a significant disease burden. PSA is a widely available screening tools for this disease. Current screen-printed carbon electrode (SPCE)-based biosensors use a two-pronged probe approach to capture urinary miRNA. We were able to successfully detect specific exosomal miRNAs (exomiRs) in the urine of patients with prostate cancer, including exomiR-451 and exomiR-21, and used electrochemistry for measurement and analysis. Our results significantly reaffirmed the presence of exomiR-451 in urine and that a CV value higher than 220 nA is capable of identifying the presence of disease (p-value = 0.005). Similar results were further proven by a PAS greater than 4 (p-value = 0.001). Moreover, a higher urinary exomiR-21 was observed in the high-T3b stage; this significantly decreased following tumor removal (p-values were 0.016 and 0.907, respectively). According to analysis of the correlation with tumor metastasis, a higher exomiR-21 was associated with lymphatic metastasis (p-value 0.042), and higher exomiR-461 expression was correlated with tumor stage (p-value 0.031), demonstrating that the present exomiR biosensor can usefully predict tumor progression. In conclusion, this biosensor represents an easy-to-use, non-invasive screening tool that is both sensitive and specific. We strongly believe that this can be used in conjunction with PSA for the screening of prostate cancer. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Women's Special Issue Series: Biosensors)
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13 pages, 3433 KiB  
Article
Effective Capacitance from Equivalent Electrical Circuit as a Tool for Monitoring Non-Adherent Cell Suspensions at Low Frequencies
by Alma De León-Hernández, Luisa Romero-Ornelas, Roberto G. Ramírez-Chavarría, Eva Ramón-Gallegos and Celia Sánchez-Pérez
Bioengineering 2022, 9(11), 697; https://doi.org/10.3390/bioengineering9110697 - 16 Nov 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2023
Abstract
Analyzing the electrical double layer (EDL) in electrical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) measurement at low frequencies remains a challenging task for sensing purposes. In this work, we propose two approaches to deal with the EDL in measuring impedance for particles and non-adherent cells in [...] Read more.
Analyzing the electrical double layer (EDL) in electrical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) measurement at low frequencies remains a challenging task for sensing purposes. In this work, we propose two approaches to deal with the EDL in measuring impedance for particles and non-adherent cells in an electrolytic suspension. The first approach is a simple procedure to compute a normalized electrical impedance spectrum named dispersed medium index (DMi). The second is the EIS modeling through an equivalent electric circuit based on the so-called effective capacitance (Cef), which unifies the EDL phenomena. Firstly, as an experiment under controlled conditions, we examine polymer particles of 6, 15, and 48 μm in diameter suspended in a 0.9% sodium chloride solution. Subsequently, we used K-562 cells and leukocytes suspended in a culture medium (RPMI-1640 supplemented) for a biological assay. As the main result, the DMi is a function of the particle concentration. In addition, it shows a tendency with the particle size; regardless, it is limited to a volume fraction of 0.03 × 10−4 to 58 × 10−4. The DMi is not significantly different between K-562 cells and leukocytes for most concentrations. On the other hand, the Cef exhibits high applicability to retrieve a function that describes the concentration for each particle size, the K-562 cells, and leukocytes. The Cef also shows a tendency with the particle size without limitation within the range tested, and it allows distinction between the K-562 and leukocytes in the 25 cells/µL to 400 cells/µL range. We achieved a simple method for determining an Cef by unifying the parameters of an equivalent electrical circuit from data obtained with a conventional potentiostat. This simple approach is affordable for characterizing the population of non-adherent cells suspended in a cell culture medium. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Women's Special Issue Series: Biosensors)
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12 pages, 3608 KiB  
Article
Spectral Methods for Response Enhancement of Microwave Resonant Sensors in Continuous Non-Invasive Blood Glucose Monitoring
by Giovanni Buonanno, Adriana Brancaccio, Sandra Costanzo and Raffaele Solimene
Bioengineering 2022, 9(4), 156; https://doi.org/10.3390/bioengineering9040156 - 4 Apr 2022
Cited by 10 | Viewed by 2723
Abstract
In this paper, the performance of three recent algorithms for the frequency-response enhancement of microwave resonant sensors are compared. The first one, a single-step algorithm, is based on a couple of direct-inverse Fourier transforms, giving a densely sampled response as a result. The [...] Read more.
In this paper, the performance of three recent algorithms for the frequency-response enhancement of microwave resonant sensors are compared. The first one, a single-step algorithm, is based on a couple of direct-inverse Fourier transforms, giving a densely sampled response as a result. The second algorithm exploits an iterative procedure to progressively restricts the frequency response. The final one is based on the super-resolution MUSIC algorithm. The comparison is carried out through a Monte Carlo analysis. In particular, synthetic signals are firstly exploited to mimic the frequency response of a resonant microwave sensor. Then, experimental data collected from water-glucose solutions are adopted as validation test for potential applications in noninvasive blood-glucose monitoring. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Women's Special Issue Series: Biosensors)
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Review

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19 pages, 5570 KiB  
Review
Recent Advances in CRISPR/Cas-Based Biosensors for Protein Detection
by Jing Wang, Xifang Yang, Xueliang Wang and Wanhe Wang
Bioengineering 2022, 9(10), 512; https://doi.org/10.3390/bioengineering9100512 - 28 Sep 2022
Cited by 12 | Viewed by 4406
Abstract
CRISPR is an acquired immune system found in prokaryotes that can accurately recognize and cleave foreign nucleic acids, and has been widely explored for gene editing and biosensing. In the past, CRISPR/Cas-based biosensors were mainly applied to detect nucleic acids in the field [...] Read more.
CRISPR is an acquired immune system found in prokaryotes that can accurately recognize and cleave foreign nucleic acids, and has been widely explored for gene editing and biosensing. In the past, CRISPR/Cas-based biosensors were mainly applied to detect nucleic acids in the field of biosensing, and their applications for the detection of other types of analytes were usually overlooked such as small molecules and disease-related proteins. The recent work shows that CRISPR/Cas biosensors not only provide a new tool for protein analysis, but also improve the sensitivity and specificity of protein detections. However, it lacks the latest review to summarize CRISPR/Cas-based biosensors for protein detection and elucidate their mechanisms of action, hindering the development of superior biosensors for proteins. In this review, we summarized CRISPR/Cas-based biosensors for protein detection based on their mechanism of action in three aspects: antibody-assisted CRISPR/Cas-based protein detection, aptamer-assisted CRISPR/Cas-based protein detection, and miscellaneous CRISPR/Cas-based methods for protein detection, respectively. Moreover, the prospects and challenges for CRISPR/Cas-based biosensors for protein detection are also discussed. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Women's Special Issue Series: Biosensors)
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