Team:Cambridge/Tools/microMeasure

An ever popular class of iGEM projects are those which create biosensors. This year more teams than ever have dedicated their time to the development of biosensors, for example Peking are detecting heavy metals, Imperial identifying parasites and Sheffield recognising chlolera.

Real life isn't black and white

In every application of a biosensor it is useful to know the amount of the factor being measured. There are a numerous existing reporters. However to our knowledge there are none which are both affordable and quantitative. Some teams attempt to solve this problem by using a series of wells sensitive to increasing concentrations of the substance. But this requires a great deal of work to tune the sensors correctly.

We have already shown that the amount of the light produced by a bacterial culture can be assayed affordably with our E.glometer. Such devices could be mass produced lowering production costs further and distributed with the bacterial biosensors.

Co-reporters

It is often useful to have one cell measuring reporting two different outputs. Light is an effective means of achieving this, since it has different wavelengths which can be easily separated by inexpensive filters. The various coloured outputs that we have created would be useful tools for achieving this.

Applications of co-reporters include:

• Using one output as a control to check for biosensor viability
• Measuring two or more quantities concurrently, e.g. a number of different toxins