Project Description

More than 65% of imported extra virgin olive oil is rancid due to poor handling or the deliberate addition of extraneous, non-beneficial oils. This sub-par oil is then sold to consumers, absent of health benefits including antioxidants and polyunsaturated fats. This summer, we are assembling a biosensor capable of quickly and cheaply evaluating defects in the chemical profile of olive oil, providing both consumers and retailers with a means of ensuring product quality.

Current methods for detecting defects in olive oil are by no means easy. The current gold standard, GC-MS, is time-consuming and expensive. Alternatively, most biosensors can only detect one analyte at a time, limiting the scope of their utility in food science. The biosensor developed by our team couples enzyme engineering with fundamental principles of electrochemistry to yield an instrument capable of discerning the concentrations of multiple analytes in a sample. Enzymes are well known for their specificity for multiple similar substrates, albeit with varying efficiency. This property is known as cross-specificity. We are in the process of engineering and characterizing the cross-specificity profiles of several NAD+ dependent Enzymes active for analytes indicating rancidity in olive oil. Additionally, we are developing an electrochemical platform for efficient detection of the coproduct of these enzymes, NADH, in complex solutions. By coupling and multiplexing these enzymes with several electrochemical cells, an electrochemical biosensor will be made that can detect the presence of multiple indicators of rancidity in olive oil simultaneously.

Our modular electrochemical biosensor will be able to generate a profile of compounds in a sample of olive oil. This will provide a rapid, accurate assessment of the oil’s quality, allowing consumers and retailers to cheaply distinguish between healthy and defective olive oil. Producers and packagers may plausibly prescreen outgoing oil to confirm the quality of the oil, as may retailers. Given the lack of certified quality control venues in the U.S., the development of a widely accessible device should enable the olive oil industry to effectively regulate, monitor, and safeguard its reputation.