Hội là học tập để thích ứng với ô nhiễm bởi các kim loại nặng trong môi trường, và bây giờ là cố gắng để khắc phục, kiểm soát và giảm thiểu ô nhiễm như ở bất cứ nơi nào có thể. Để làm điều này, có một nhu cầu cho các phương pháp đánh giá lượng ô nhiễm kim loại nặng trong môi trường tự nhiên và công nghiệp. Mặc dù nó là tương đối đơn giản để sử dụng các kỹ thuật hóa học phân tích để phát hiện tổng số kim loại nặng ở một vị trí. | 19 Bacterial Metal-Responsive Elements and Their Use in Biosensors for Monitoring of Heavy Metals Ibolya Bontidean and Elisabeth Csoregi Lund University Lund Sweden Philippe Corbisier Institute for Reference Materials and Measurements Geel Belgium Jonathan R. Lloyd and Nigel L. Brown The University of Birmingham Edgbaston Birmingham United Kingdom 1. INTRODUCTION Society is learning to adapt to pollution by heavy metals in the environment and is now attempting to remediate control and minimize such pollution wherever possible. To do this there is a need for methods of assessing the amount of heavy metal pollution in the natural and industrial environments. Although it is relatively straightforward to use the techniques of analytical chemistry to detect total amounts of heavy metal in a given location this rarely tells you how much Copyright 2002 Marcel Dekker Inc. of this metal is a biological hazard. To achieve this biological methods may offer distinct advantages over chemical methods. It is really only since the industrial revolution that large numbers of people have been exposed to significant levels of toxic metals although at least since Roman times heavy metals have been used in medicine and cosmetics 1 . In contrast microorganisms have always lived with pollution by heavy metals as they have evolved to occupy ecological niches in which these toxic metals naturally occur and in which they may be released by geochemical processes. Consequently bacteria in particular but also yeasts fungi and many plants have developed specific mechanisms to tolerate or detoxify heavy metals. This chapter describes some of the ways in which we and others have begun to exploit these biological mechanisms to determine the amount of bio-available heavy metal in natural and industrial environments. These methods are still in their infancy compared with the techniques of analytical chemistry but may offer some advantages in ease of use as well as in biological relevance. In .
