In vivo bioelectronic nose using transgenic mice for specific odor detection

This study focuses on the odor detection with “in vivo bioelectronic nose”. Still, high specific sensing elements and improved shelf-life are highly desired for the construction of biosensors. So we utilized the Green fluorescent protein (GFP) genetically labeled mouse M72 as sensing components to improve the specificity. In addition, long-term in vivo electrophysiological monitoring from M72 olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) could be obtained by implanting the Microelectrode arrays (MEAs) probe into behaving mouse's olfactory bulb. We first explored its reliability, repeatability, specificity for odor detection. We thus found it possessed high sensitivity for odors which contain benzene ring. Further, we explored its potential in trinitrotoluene (TNT) detection. The results illustrated that it can detect TNT in liquid concentration as low as 10
^-8
M and can discriminate TNT from chemicals with similar structure. It is suggested that the in vivo biomimetic olfactory system could provide novel approaches for promoting the specificity and working-life of olfactory biosensors as well as detecting explosives.