General bioindicator systems

Summary

This chapter consists of patent documents describing biosensing systems that do not specify a detecting substance in the first independent claim.  Many of these patent documents disclose alternative detection methods, reporter organism, or genes compared to the common transgenic organism with an inducible promoter: reporter gene construct:

• a plant reporter system containing a non-plant reporter gene (Aresa Biodetection APS)
• genes involved in plant pigment synthesis as reporter genes (Edenspace Systems Corp.)
• lyophilized transgenic bacterium biodetector (E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Co.)
• transgenic zebrafish to detect water contaminants (University of Cincinnati)
• use of hpd (gene coding for p-hydroxyphenyl-pyruvic acid dioxygenase) as a reporter gene for biosensors (Greenovation Biotech GmbH)
• a biosensing device containing a transformed bacterium (University of Tennessee  Research Corp.)
• a reporter bacterium from wastewater sludge (Eastman Chemical Co.)
• a biosensing system containing a a second ‘control’ transgenic microorganism with constitutive reporter expression (VITO)