Improvised explosive devices (IEDs) are constructed from easily obtainable ingredients that are often unregulated and difficult to trace. Salts of the oxyhalide perchlorate are frequently used as oxidisers in IEDs and in commercially available munitions, thus a reliable detection is needed to aid forensic investigations and the tracing of environmental ground or surface water contamination. We introduce the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans as a biosensor for the presence of perchlorate, a promising alternative to the costly, technically challenging and time-consuming current perchlorate detection methods. Perchlorate uptake dynamics in C. elegans were first validated using ion exchange chromatography followed by assessing the effects of perchlorate on key life-point indices to verify the suitability of the nematodes as a forensic biosensor. Whole genome microarrays and qPCR analyses established that a set of immune and stress response genes were enriched during perchlorate exposure. A nematode strain (agIs219) containing an integrated copy of the significantly overexpressed t24b8.5 gene promoter followed by a GFP reporter gene was shown to fluoresce in a perchlorate dose dependent manner with a limit of detection (LOD) of 0.5 mg mL⁻¹. Whilst chemicals commonly used in the construction of IEDs did not induce fluorescence, exposure to other oxyhalides did, highlighting the presence of possible shared stress response pathways. Burnt wire sparklers containing potassium perchlorate elicited fluorescence while other non-perchlorate containing post-blast explosion matrices did not. This demonstrates how C. elegans can be used to screen for perchlorate at environmental hotspots, an optimization, possibly with other target transgenes, is required to enable the detection of perchlorate at concentrations below 0.5 mg mL⁻¹.

中文翻译：

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通过无脊椎动物生物传感器检测高氯酸盐

简易爆炸装置 (IED) 由容易获得的成分构成，这些成分通常不受管制且难以追踪。卤氧化物高氯酸盐经常用作简易爆炸装置和商业弹药中的氧化剂，因此需要可靠的检测来帮助法医调查和追踪环境地面或地表水污染。我们介绍了线虫秀丽隐杆线虫作为高氯酸盐存在的生物传感器，这是一种有前途的替代目前昂贵、技术上具有挑战性和耗时的高氯酸盐检测方法。秀丽隐杆线虫的高氯酸盐摄取动力学首先使用离子交换色谱进行验证，然后评估高氯酸盐对关键生命点指数的影响，以验证线虫作为法医生物传感器的适用性。全基因组微阵列和 qPCR 分析确定一组免疫和应激反应基因在高氯酸盐暴露期间富集。包含显着过表达的t24b8.5基因启动子的整合拷贝和随后的 GFP 报告基因的线虫菌株 ( agIs219 )​​ 显示以高氯酸盐剂量依赖性方式发出荧光，检测限 (LOD) 为 0.5 mg mL ^-1. 虽然 IED 构造中常用的化学物质不会产生荧光，但暴露于其他卤氧化物会产生荧光，这突出了可能存在的共同压力反应途径的存在。含有高氯酸钾的烧过的金属丝烟火会引发荧光，而其他不含高氯酸盐的爆炸后爆炸基质则不会。这证明了如何使用秀丽隐杆线虫在环境热点筛选高氯酸盐，可能需要对其他目标转基因进行优化，以检测浓度低于 0.5 mg mL ^-1的高氯酸盐。