Team:IvyTech-South Bend

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

Anyone who wants to enjoy bathing in natural bodies of water in or near areas populated by humans or livestock may encounter unsafe levels of enteric bacteria and other opportunists. Contemporary methods of assessing water quality have a slow turn-around time so we have taken steps to perfect a biosensor for rapidly indirectly quantifying the presence of enteric bacteria in natural water samples through the detection of quorum sensing factors. Previous IGEMS have exploited the LuxR/pLux system for the detection of a variety of N-acylhomoserine lactone autoinducers. We have taken steps to further perfect a biosensor based on this device by transforming a gram-positive bacteria host to eliminate any background autoinducer signal and to build-in an enzymatic “read-out” to obtain an analog output. We envision the development of a handheld monitor that uses this IGEM biosensor, immobilized on input paper strips, to rapidly detect unsafe levels of enteric bacteria in water samples.