Insect-derived biosensors emerge as promising tools for vector surveillance

A new review published in the journal Biosensors and Biomolecular Electronics examines how biological components taken from insects, including olfactory receptors, odorant-binding proteins, and enzymes, are being engineered into biosensing platforms for monitoring disease-carrying mosquitoes and detecting insecticide resistance. The review, published on 2 July 2026, was written by Ebrahim Abbasi and synthesizes literature spanning January 2000 to September 2025, drawn from databases including Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, ScienceDirect, and IEEE Xplore.

The motivation is stark. According to the World Health Organization figures cited in the review, vector-borne pathogens account for more than 17 percent of all infectious diseases worldwide and cause over 700,000 deaths annually. Malaria alone was estimated at 263 million cases and roughly 597,000 deaths globally in 2023, while dengue has become the most rapidly expanding mosquito-borne viral disease, with substantial increases reported across Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Mosquitoes of the genera Anopheles, Aedes, and Culex transmit Plasmodium parasites, dengue, Zika, chikungunya, yellow fever, West Nile, and Japanese encephalitis viruses, and rising insecticide resistance among these vectors is complicating control efforts.

The review defines three distinct categories of technology. Insect-derived biosensors incorporate authentic insect biomolecules such as odorant-binding proteins, olfactory receptors, enzymes, or peptides, either in native or recombinant form. Insect-inspired biosensors emulate principles of insect sensory biology without using actual insect biomolecules. Biohybrid biosensors couple insect-derived biological elements with synthetic materials, nanostructures, or electronic transducers to produce measurable analytical signals. This terminology matters because the three categories differ substantially in maturity, stability, and translational readiness, and the review’s central objective is to separate experimentally established capabilities from conceptual proposals.

Three principal classes of biological recognition elements dominate the experimental literature. The first comprises odorant-binding proteins and chemosensory proteins, which are soluble, small, robust, and amenable to recombinant production. The second consists of olfactory, gustatory, and ionotropic receptors reconstituted in membrane mimetics or heterologous expression systems. The third uses whole or partially dissected insect sensory tissues and cells in biohybrid sensor constructs. Each class carries distinct trade-offs in ligand spectrum, stability, immobilization compatibility, and suitability for electrochemical, field-effect transistor, optical, or piezoelectric transduction.

Performance figures reported in the review vary by platform and experimental design. Representative odorant-binding protein-based electrochemical devices report limits of detection in the low micromolar to low nanomolar range for small volatile ligands, while field-effect transistors incorporating reconstituted olfactory receptors coupled to carbon nanotube channels have demonstrated detection in the picomolar to low nanomolar regime for specific odorants in buffered systems. Recombinant insect olfactory receptors coupled with graphene-based field-effect transistor transducers have shown sub-nanomolar sensitivity under controlled laboratory conditions. Response times are typically rapid, ranging from seconds to a few minutes, and several designs have demonstrated sensor regeneration through controlled desorption or buffer exchange, enabling repeated measurements.

For insecticide detection and resistance screening, the review reports that devices harnessing odorant-binding proteins or enzyme-based inhibition assays, transduced electrochemically, permit rapid detection of organophosphates, carbamates, and pyrethroids at concentrations comparable to regulatory thresholds. Enzyme-based biosensors incorporating acetylcholinesterase, esterases, or cytochrome P450 enzymes detect insecticides through catalytic turnover or inhibition-based readouts, offering biologically meaningful information about insecticide bioactivity rather than simple chemical presence. Novel biosensors have also been designed to detect biochemical markers associated with metabolic resistance, such as elevated esterase or monooxygenase activity, using enzyme-linked electrochemical or colorimetric readouts.

However, the review is emphatic that direct detection of insecticide-resistance biomarkers remains far less mature than vector surveillance and chemical sensing. Most published studies focus on odor detection, volatile organic compound recognition, environmental monitoring, or proof-of-concept development. Relatively few investigations have directly targeted established resistance-associated markers such as knockdown resistance mutations, acetylcholinesterase ace-1 mutations, cytochrome P450 overexpression, glutathione S-transferase activity, or carboxylesterases. Enzyme-based biosensors generally assess biochemical consequences of insecticide exposure rather than directly detecting specific resistance-conferring mechanisms. The review therefore classifies resistance monitoring through insect-derived biosensors as an emerging research frontier rather than an established application area.

Substantial translational barriers persist. Operational stability under environmental stressors, including temperature fluctuation, humidity, and complex sample matrices, remains a recurrent limitation, with many devices showing degraded performance after extended ambient exposure unless stabilized by polymer encapsulation, crosslinking, or recombinant engineering of thermostable receptor variants. Standardization of performance metrics and testing protocols is lacking, making cross-study comparisons difficult. Scalability and manufacturing reproducibility of biohybrid devices remain underdeveloped, with many studies describing artisanal fabrication methods unsuited to mass production. Longitudinal field validation is scarce, and regulatory and biosafety frameworks for deploying devices containing biologically active insect proteins in the environment are insufficiently defined. Most platforms remain at the proof-of-concept or laboratory-validation stage, with only a limited number undergoing pilot-scale field testing.

The review identifies promising research trajectories, including the development of thermostable receptor variants and synthetic receptor mimetics, multiplexed sensor arrays combining odorant-binding proteins, olfactory receptors, and enzymatic reporters to generate discriminative multivariate signatures, advanced nanofabrication compatible with low-cost manufacturing, and coupling of biosensor outputs with machine learning pipelines for real-time anomaly detection and predictive modeling of vector dynamics. Integration with Internet of Things infrastructure, wireless sensor networks, and artificial intelligence-based analytics is proposed as a pathway toward continuous, automated surveillance, although most such IoT-enabled systems remain at pilot-development or proof-of-concept stages.

The review also notes that ethical and sustainability considerations are gaining attention, with several studies favoring recombinant expression and cell-free synthesis of insect receptor proteins over harvesting from wild insect populations, while lifecycle analyses and environmental risk assessments of device components remain limited in the current literature. The review was conducted by a single author, which means the screening and eligibility assessment processes were not independently duplicated, and the heterogeneity of experimental protocols precluded quantitative meta-analysis. Within those constraints, the assessment concludes that olfactory receptor-based field-effect transistor platforms and odorant-binding protein-based electrochemical sensors currently show the greatest promise for near-term field application, while enzyme-based biosensors offer the most practical route toward low-cost deployment for insecticide monitoring, provided that stability, standardization, and field validation challenges are addressed.

Subject of Research: Insect-derived and biohybrid biosensors for vector surveillance and insecticide resistance monitoring

Article Title: Insect-derived and biohybrid biosensors for vector surveillance: current advances, emerging opportunities for insecticide resistance monitoring, and future perspectives

Article References: Abbasi, E. (2026). Insect-derived and biohybrid biosensors for vector surveillance: current advances, emerging opportunities for insecticide resistance monitoring, and future perspectives. Biosensors and Biomolecular Electronics, 1(1), Article 7. https://doi.org/10.1186/s44510-026-00007-2

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s44510-026-00007-2

Keywords: biosensors, insect olfactory receptors, odorant-binding proteins, vector surveillance, mosquitoes, insecticide resistance, biohybrid sensors, arboviruses, electrochemical detection, field-effect transistors, IoT surveillance, malaria