Development of electronic nose for chemical safety surveillance of food

HouBroutin   
Summary

The European Parliament has called on Member States to strengthen their food safety control mechanisms by 2019 and this has become a priority for the French government. So far, there has been substantial progress in microbiological safety by developing rapid, cheap and sensitive methods that are used by regulatory authorities. However, on the chemical safety side, technical and societal transition is lagging behind. The current system is mainly reliant on surveillance and inspection plans revolving around high-performance reference methods capable of detecting toxic trace contaminants, but often expensive and cumbersome to implement, thus limiting the frequency and scope of controls. In such a context, we have proposed a collaborative project SENTINEL funded by ANR with objectives to develop a panel of three complementary high-throughput, sensitive, cost-effective screening tools for strengthening the detection of nonconformities, and for monitoring relevant sub-MRL levels of key contaminants such as PolyChloroBiphenyls (PCBs). Among them, our group focus on the development of a rapid, sensitive, cost-effective, portable electronic nose (e-Nose) for the detection of volatile organic compounds (VOC) as markers. In this internship, we will explore the potential of our e-Nose for the applications in the field of food safety. The performance of the e-Nose will be evaluated by analyzing VOC samples at different complexity level, from pure individual VOC markers identified previously by the partner INRA-QuaPA using high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS), to V OCs emitted by in vitro samples (cells) and even by in-vivo samples (chicken liver and/or plasma samples) after the contamination by PCBs. The internship will be carried out in a multidisciplinary laboratory SyMMES at the interface of physics, chemistry, biology and nanotechnology.

Background and skills expected

Physical-chemistry with strong interest on the biology and nanotechnology

Competences that will be acquired during the internship

During this internship, the candidate will acquire different competences including different techniques concerning the conception and construction of classical biochips and novel electronic noses, surface functionalization (self-assembled monolayers, SAMs), as well as analysis of volatile organic compounds using electronic noses based on SPRi. Moreover, data processing and simulation will be performed in close collaboration with a theorist of our team.

References :

(1) J. S. Weerakkody, M. El Kazzy, E. Jacquier, P. H. Elchinger, R. Mathey, W. L. Ling, C. Herrier, T. Livache, A. Buhot, Yanxia Hou, * “A Surfactant-like Peptide Self-assembled into a Biohybrid Multi-sensor Array for an Electronic Nose”, ACS Nano, 2022, 16, 3, 4444. (DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.1c10734)
(2) S. Brenet, A. John-Herpin, F. X. Gallat, B. Musnier, A. Buhot, C. Herrier, T. Rousselle, T. Livache, Y. Hou*, “Highly-Selective Optoelectronic Nose Based on Surface Plasmon Resonance Imaging for Sensing Volatile Organic Compounds”, Analytical Chemistry, 2018, 90 (16), 9879. (DOI: 10.1021/acs.analchem.8b02036)
(3) S. Gaggiotti, C. Hurot, J. S. Weerakkody, R. Mathey, A. Buhot, M. Mascini, Y. Hou*, D. Compagnone*, “Development of an optoelectronic nose based on surface plasmon resonance imaging with peptide and hairpin DNA for sensing volatile organic compounds”, Sensors and Actuators: B. Chemical, 2020, 127188. (DOI: 10.1016/j.snb.2019.127188)

Supervisor(s) : Dr. Yanxia Hou-Broutin
Laboratory : Systèmes Moléculaires et nanoMatériaux pour l'Énergie et la Santé (SyMMES, UMR 5819 CEACNRS-
UGA)
Team/Group : Chimie pour la Reconnaissance et l’Étude d’Assemblages Biologiques (CREAB)
Contacts - E-mail : Yanxia.hou-broutin@cea.fr Tel : 04 38 78 94 78
Web-page : https://www.symmes.fr/en/Pages/Portrait/Yanxia-Hou-Broutin.aspx
 

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Published on September 9, 2022
Updated on April 28, 2023