NSF Award
9421558
Proposal #9421558 Wood Biologically relevant environmental monitoring can be achieved using the genetic responses of microbes to environment conditions as sensors, particularly the specific and generalized responses to toxicity. The generalized toxicity response may be especially important when prior knowledge of the type of toxin is unavailable. Real-time transduction of the genetic responses is most commonly provided by coupling a gene encoding a bioluminescent protein to the system. The information content of a single luminescent signal generally is insufficient to compensate for the complexity of living systems, however. The Promega Corporation proposes development of a system based on multiplexing by wavelength to increase the information content of the signal transduction process. Their research has shown that the color of light emitted by beetle luciferases can be controlled by changing less than 1% of their primary structures. This unique situation should allow incorporation of functionally equivalent but distinguishable signal generators into a single sensor, thus granting internal control of the sensor response. The product of this work will be a platform design for a signal transduction system to provide reliable and robust performance microbial sensors. The general and fundamental nature of design will make it widely portable into different sensor configuration.
