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The innovative principle is the use as sensors of living organisms and the real-time check of their functional conditions by a non-invasive technique.

In fact it implies the measurement of the ultra-weak delayed photoluminescence parameters, that are sensible indicators of the biological system functional status.

The living organisms are unicellular algae, the photoluminescence of which is influenced by the quality of the liquid in the solution they live in. The status of the biological system is detected by a transducer and transformed into an electromagnetic signal, further elaborated and analysed by standard techniques.

The technique appears promising as it is strongly a-specific, i.e. it responds to a large range of possible contaminants, allowing a quick quality control.

Moreover, using some typical indexes related to the luminescence decay curve parameters, it gives information on several types of possible contaminants, orienting the analyst's further work towards the determination of single contaminant concentrations by classical methods.

 
Publications in this field:

1) F.Musumeci, M.Godlewski, F.A.Popp and M.W. Ho "Time Behaviour of Delayed Luminescence in Acetabularia Acetabulum" Recent Advances in Biophoton Research, F.A.Popp, K.H.Li and Q.Gu Eds, World Scientific, Singapore (1992) 307-326

2) A.Triglia, F.Musumeci, A.Scordino "Photoinduced Delayed Luminescence from Acetabularia Acetabulum as a Tool to Check the Presence of Atrazine in Water" Biophotonics, L.Beloussov and F.A.Popp Eds, Bioinform Services CO., Moscow, Russia (1995) 423-429

3) A.Scordino, A.Triglia, F.Musumeci, F.Grasso, Z. Rajfur "Influence of the Presence of Atrazine in Water on the In-Vivo Delayed Luminescence of Acetabularia Acetabulum" J. of Photochemistry and Photobiology B - 32 (1996) 11-17

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