Team:Grenoble/Project/Abstract

From 2012.igem.org

iGEM Grenoble 2012

Project

sEnsiColi: A tunable and reliable ultra-sensitive detector

Multi-resistant bacteria are a worldwide issue which in a very near future will have huge impacts on our societies and ways diagnosis and prevention will be performed. In this optic, the Grenoble iGEM team has built an ultra-sensitive pathogen detector.

It consists of three interconnected modules:
  1. Detection
  2. Amplification/Communication
  3. Output

The detection module consists of a recombinant membrane receptor that, once activated, actuates an amplification loop. The amplification system contains a genetic feed forward loop, which filters out false positive outputs. Once amplified and filtered, the signal is transmitted to neighboring bacteria via a diffusible molecule. In turn, the amplification loop is triggered which leads to the production of a measurable fluorescence output.

The design of our network is easily adaptable to different input signals by using other receptor domains.