BIOSENSORS
The biosensors are monitor and control equipments. They can measure, in short time, fundamental parameters related to biological processes and/or chemical processes.
The fundamental characteristic of a biosensor is the interaction between a biological sample (enzyme, antibody, DNA strand, cell, etc.) and a signal transducer.
The principle is the following: the interaction between the biological material and the sample changes one or more chemical-physical parameters, the transducer records the system variation and produces an electrical signal, which can opportunely be amplified, be elaborated and therefore read from the operator.

The sensors represent the interface between the environment and the processing systems, therefore they have a strong impact on wide spread products: for example they are an essential element for the control and the diagnostics, in fields like the medicine, the industrial automation, the telecommunications, the agriculture.
BioAge uses several technologies based on many kind of transducers, integrated, opportunely modified, chemically and biochemically funzionalized, and capable to read from the operator.

An important factor for the sensors spread have been the data elaboration evolution: the development of microprocessors and specific integrated circuits has permitted the low cost elaboration, precise and reliable increasing the intelligence of the system.
The research in this field more and more is directed to the transducer miniaturization, to the wide scale production, and to the creation of multiparametric biosensors for the control of the product quality, of the environmental pollutions and for the human health, to determinate a general improvement of the quality of life.

The biosensoristic applications are in many different fields: from the environmental field (with biosensors for pollution), to the agricultural and food fields (with sensors for the foods quality, and for the GMO detection), to the industrial field (with sensors inside of the production lines), to the bio-medical field (with diagnostic sensors for revelation of genetic diseases and/or predispositions in short times and to low cost).

The biosensors are obtaining in the recent years an increasing marketing interest, thanks to some their characteristics:

they are easy to use: generally the samples do not need particular preparations before the analyses. Therefore it's possible directly analyze food, blood, polluted water etc

the answer times are reduced, the instruments dimensions are compact and the operator safety is guaranteed, because they don't need radioisotopes or other markers

the costs, respect to the traditional methods of analyses, much more are contained

the biosensors do not need of specialized technical staff for their use