Team:Stanford/Analog Sensor

The Kinase-Phosphotase Sensor

Overview

Our second sensor design responds to a range of ratios, varying the intensity of the output to indicate the ratio of input chemicals.

One of the input chemicals leads to the phosphorylation of a transcription factor, while the other leads to its de-phosphorylation. Only the phosphorylated version of the transcription factor can activate the promoter upstream of the output protein.

uses a transcription factor regulated by a kinase/phosphotase pair. In this system, the phosphorylated form of the transcription factor causes transcription of a gene coding for our output protein. The production of the transcription factor is under the control of a constitutive promoter, which maintains a basal concentration. The kinase that acts on the transcription factor is under the control of a promoter positively regulated by A. A phosphotase is similarly controlled by input B. By testing the concentration of output protein in relation to various concentrations of input chemicals, we plan to create an algorithm that will allow us to work backwards from a given concentration of output protein to deduce the ratio of the original concentrations of input chemicals.

Diagrams