The Biomimetic Optoelectronic Nose: Getting Closer
to the Human Nose
Abstract
Using approximately 400 different types of olfactory receptors, the human nose has the extraordinary ability to detect and recognize odors through the combination of two recognition principles: specific and cross-reactive. Inspired by the human nose, we have been developing original biomimetic electronic noses (eNs) for ten years using biomolecules as sensing materials, including peptides, hairpin DNA and odorant binding proteins (OBPs) with the ambition to approach the performance of the human nose for the reliable and rapid analysis of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). One of the main challenges is to design relevant specific and cross-reactive sensing materials and combine them in a rational way on the same chip. Our electronic nose is based on an optical detection system, surface plasmon resonance imaging (SPRi), which allows to monitoring binding events in a label-free and real-time manner by providing temporal responses with kinetic information, with capacity for simultaneous detection on a multiplexed sensor array. The combination of such a detection system with novel biological sensing materials provides our eNs with improved performance in terms of sensitivity and selectivity. Furthermore, our technology has been valorized by a local company for the development of an efficient portable device for odor analysis in diverse domains.
Brief Biography
Dr. Yanxia Hou obtained her PhD in Analytical Chemistry at Ecole Centrale de Lyon (France) in 2005. In 2006, she did her first postdoc at University of California San Francisco and Touro University (USA), followed by a 2nd postdoc at CEA-LETI, Grenoble (France). Today she is research director at French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). She has strong expertise on electronic noses, biosensors and biochips for biomedical and many other applications. Since 2008, she leads the development of novel optoelectronic noses and tongues based on surface plasmon resonance imaging at the laboratory of SyMMES, at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA, Grenoble, France). She is one of the co-founders of the start-up company Aryballe for the miniaturization of the optoelectronic nose for digital olfaction. Today, she is the head of a research group of 24 persons at the laboratory of SyMMES.
