Biosensors are finding new places in science, and the growth of this technology will lead to dramatic improvements in the ability to detect microorganisms in recreational and source waters for the protection of public health. Much of the improvement in biosensors has followed developments in molecular biology processes and coupling these with advances in engineering. Progress in the fields of nano-engineering and materials science have opened many new avenues for biosensors. The adaptation of these diverse technological fields into sensors has been driven by the need to develop more rapid sensors that are highly accurate, sensitive and specific, and have other desirable properties, such as robust deployment capability, unattended operations, and remote data transfer. The primary challenges to the adoption of biosensors in recreational and source water applications are cost of ownership, particularly operations and maintenance costs, problems caused by false positive rates, and to a lesser extent false negative rates, legacy technologies, policies and practices which will change as biosensors improve to the point of replacing more traditional methods for detecting organisms in environmental samples.

生物传感器正在科学中找到新的位置，这项技术的发展将显着提高检测娱乐用水和源水中微生物的能力，以保护公众健康。生物传感器的大部分改进都伴随着分子生物学过程的发展，并将其与工程学的进步相结合。纳米工程和材料科学领域的进展为生物传感器开辟了许多新途径。由于需要开发更快速的传感器，这些传感器具有高度准确、灵敏和特异性，并具有其他理想特性，例如强大的部署能力、无人值守操作和远程数据传输，因此将这些不同的技术领域应用于传感器。