When most of us hear an article title like “biosensors to detect environmental pollution”, we’re plagued by one question: what on earth is a biosensor? The answer is both surprising and ingenious–and as a group of students at the University of Glasgow learned, the answer is one of the most hopeful developments yet in the continuing war against environmental pollution.

Biosensors, as Latin scholars already know, are living creatures or other forms of life used to detect some chemical or physical change in the environment.

The classic example of a biosensor is the canary in the mine. The canary is placed in a cage and kept in mines in order to check for the presence of natural gas. If the canary dies, there’s gas in the mine, and everybody very quickly runs somewhere else.

This is, technically speaking, a good use of biosensors to detect environmental pollution–but not nearly to the degree of sophistication needed to diagnose and treat environmental problems on a grand scale.

What the students at the University of Glasgow have found is a much more practical and advanced use of biosensors to detect environmental pollution. The students developed their biosensor technology in 2007 as part of a competition among international students: the International Genetically Engineered Machine Awards, held by MIT in Boston.

The winning entry was a genetically-engineered microbe, designed to detect toxic chemicals. Specifically, the microbe was meant to detect industrial runoff and natural gas–exactly like the canary, but on a much smaller scale. The microbe was then placed into a fuel cell that would receive an electric charge when the microbe detected the toxic chemicals.

As a result, the electrical cell would fire, warning signals would be activated, and the presence of environmental pollution would be confirmed.

Admittedly, the scale of the students’ project in the field of biosensors to detect environmental pollution was small: a single working microbe culture and a single fuel cell, built as a proof of concept for the technology. Currently, the University of Glasgow is seeking funds for additional research along the students’ lines.

According to project leader Scott Ramsay, the technology could be easily expanded to a series of warning/monitoring stations running on biosensor principles, designed to check the air and water quality levels in a given region and report any abnormal levels of pollution to authorities or to a central database. Clean air and water laws–notoriously difficult to enforce due to problems with measuring air and water pollution–could them be more effectively monitored and enforced, helping to curb the problem of pollution.

It’s a big job, especially for a modern canary in a mine.

But biosensors to detect environmental pollution may be the best hope we have yet–assuming that you believe that big hopes can come in small packages.

Animal species go extinct every day.

There are thousands of bird species–parakeets and seabirds–that vanish before scientists or birdwatchers ever get a chance to study them, beyond a flap of wings or a blur of colorful feathers passing through a window. Insect populations, with their high birth rate and ever-changing environmental, spawn whole subfamilies and variant species before vanishing forever. And some of the world’s most beautiful and once-abundant mammals find their numbers dwindling into the hundreds, then the dozens, then to none at all.

There are any number of causes and any number of “villains” to blame. Environmental pollution and degradation is a common culprit. Overhunting is another.

Simple Darwinism is yet another. Whatever the cause, however, the result is the same. A population of animals vanishes forever with no possibility of being encountered again.

That is–in most cases.

The story of the Tasmanian Tiger is all too typical in the world of endangered species studies and other issues related to environmental pollution and degradation. Yet the Tasmanian Tiger’s story is filled with unconventional flourishes.

For example, the Tasmanian Tiger isn’t a true tiger at all, but a type of hybrid wolf/marsupial, named for the striped pattern on its hindquarters. At one time there were thousands of Tasmanian Tigers wandering the outback of Australia, competing with other animals for food, water, and breeding opportunities. Some 2,000 years ago, the Tasmanian Tiger lost this competition, and the only remaining members of the species were confined to Tasmania proper.

In the 1930s, the Tasmanian Tiger lost the competition for food and livelihood yet again–this time to the most dangerous opponent of all. Overhunting and the environmental pollution and degradation that comes hand in hand with human inhabitants moving into a formerly wild region led to the extinction of the Tasmanian Tiger for good. The last confirmed member of the species died in captivity in 1936.

This was a double blow to zoology, since the Tasmanian Tiger wasn’t simply a species unto itself, but also the last surviving member of the mysterious genus Thylacinus, the marsupial wolves. The opportunity to study the convergent evolution of the genus was forever lost with the Tiger, a victim of environmental pollution and degradation.

But, as we said, the story of the Tasmanian Tiger is not without its unique flourishes–such as the flash of stripes seen moving through the field of vision of a park ranger in 1995, or the herd of six or seven Thylacines spotted raiding a villager’s livestock in 1997.

Could the verdict on this victim of environmental pollution and degradation have been premature? The Australian government has since 1995 been running an investigation into the wilds of Tasmania, seeking answers. The story of environmental pollution and degradation has been, throughout human history, a tragic one–the mysterious “resurrection” of the Tasmanian Tiger could be–in at least one story–a happy ending.