Novel Biosensor Discovery Utilizing Metagenomics and Bioinformatics

A platform for rapid production of novel sensors is in great demand to protect and aid the Warfighter in today’s ever changing defense landscape. Biosensors are one possible sensing solution as they harness nature’s immense diversity and adaptability to detect desired targets. By coupling synthetic biology with nature’s capabilities, any small molecule can be detected. This project focuses on transcription factor (TF)-based biosensors and seeks to develop a platform for rapid discovery and engineering of naturally-derived TFs to be screened and developed in a cell-free manner. Certain families of TFs possess a signal binding domain, which will regulate downstream expression. These TFs will be exploited for biosensor design. We will use bioinformatics to mine existing databases with information on TFs and their ligand small molecules (SMs) to discover TFs for specific SMs. For uncharacterized SMs, we will employ a functional metagenomics method to discover novel sensing TFs. These TFs will be tested in a cell-free system as biosensors.