Team:Virginia United

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==An Engineering Approach to an Environmental Biosensor for Multiple Fish Toxins==
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We used a co-design approach to construct a multiple-compound biosensor that can detect heavy metals (arsenic, mercury, copper) in aquatic environments. The design uses a logic system on three different regulatory levels of the cell. One of the approaches utilizes the operator sites of regulatory promoters, hybridizing two promoters’ operator sites into a single co-sensing promoter. In order for the hybrid promoter to initiate transcription, two target metals that control the operator sites must be present. Since, the hybrid promoters are attached to a single fluorescent protein, the detection of both metals can be measured using fluorescence. The second approach utilizes a fluorescent protein complementation system. When a target metal is detected by a cell, it will transcribe a portion of the non-fluorescent protein. Upon translation, the portions of the fluorescent proteins will bond together and fluoresce, reporting the presence of the two target metals. The third approach allows each of the sensory reporters to express a fluorescent protein in the presence of its target metal. If multiple target metals are detected by a culture, fluorescence spectroscopy is used to separate out the wavelengths of each fluorescent protein, which then determines what compounds are present in the system.
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In all three designs we are amplifying the signal that each E. coli cell emits once it is exposed to the target metal with a quorum sensing system.  This is because in small doses each metal may not individually be toxic to fish. Each cell releases a signal when exposed to the target metal, which is then recognized by neighboring cells.  A fluorescent protein is attached to the promoter that recognizes the signal, establishing a more rapid, binary-like response time in the system. The overall goal of the project is to create a set of interchangeable inputs and outputs serving a wide variety of applications such as bioremediation machinery.
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'''
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== '''Quorum Sensing Amplifiers and a Co-design Approach for Information Processing''' ==
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<BR>
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As the field of biological engineering grows, so too does the complexity of genetically engineered systems.  Fabricated metabolic pathways are becoming increasingly intricate and expansive:  how is one to know if the approach used to synthesize a pathway is necessarily the best approach?  Our group, composed of five institutions, strives to show that co-design, a common engineering practice used to evaluate relative efficiencies, can be implemented to select the best design for a system.  Using a biosensor as an application of carrying out co-design, we constructed three systems utilizing different mechanisms that can detect inputs and give an output correlating to which input(s) it senses.  To maintain consistency, our systems are designed to use quorum sensing to amplify signal transduction upon input detection.  This essentially acts as an on/off switch, allowing the system to be engineered to detect a certain input threshold and establishing a binary response.
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Latest revision as of 03:27, 28 October 2010

igem

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Quorum Sensing Amplifiers and a Co-design Approach for Information Processing


As the field of biological engineering grows, so too does the complexity of genetically engineered systems. Fabricated metabolic pathways are becoming increasingly intricate and expansive: how is one to know if the approach used to synthesize a pathway is necessarily the best approach? Our group, composed of five institutions, strives to show that co-design, a common engineering practice used to evaluate relative efficiencies, can be implemented to select the best design for a system. Using a biosensor as an application of carrying out co-design, we constructed three systems utilizing different mechanisms that can detect inputs and give an output correlating to which input(s) it senses. To maintain consistency, our systems are designed to use quorum sensing to amplify signal transduction upon input detection. This essentially acts as an on/off switch, allowing the system to be engineered to detect a certain input threshold and establishing a binary response.


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