A biosensor monitoring approach for toxic algae: Construction of calibration curves to infer cell numbers in field material

A variety of shellfish toxin-producing Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) occur every year in coastal temperate waters worldwide. These toxic HABs may cause lengthy (months) harvesting bans of mussels and other suspension feeding bivalves exposed to their blooms. To safeguard public health and the shellfish industry, European Union regulations request periodic monitoring of potentially toxic microalgae in seawater and phycotoxins in live bivalve molluscs from shellfish production areas. Monitoring of other toxic microalgae, e.g., fish killers, is based solely on cell counts. Morphological identification and quantification of microalgal cells with light microscopy is time-consuming, requires a good expertise, and accurate identification to species level (e.g., Pseudo-nitzschia species) may require electron microscopy. Toxicity varies among morphologically similar species; there are toxic and non-toxic strains of the same species. Molecular techniques using ribosomal DNA sequences offer a possibility to identify and detect precisely the potentially toxic genus/species. In an earlier project (MIDTAL), specific probes against rRNA sequences of all HAB taxa, known at the time of the project, affecting shellfish areas worldwide were designed, and those affecting Europe were tested and calibrated against rRNA extracts of clonal cultures and field samples. Microarray technology was adopted to relate to cell numbers the fluorescence signal from the reaction of all target species probes spotted in the microarray slides with those present in a single sample extract. The EMERTOX project aimed to develop a more automatic “Lab on a chip” (LOC) technology, including a non- (cell) disruptive water concentration system and biosensors for HAB cells detection. Here, calibration curves are presented against toxic microalgae (cultures and field samples) causing endemic and emerging toxicity events in Galicia (NW Spain) and Portugal. Results here relating cell numbers to electrochemical signals will be used in an early warning biosensor for toxic algae.