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Every year, one third of global food production -1.3 billion tons of food- is thrown away, partially due to the “best before” dating system. iGEM Groningen 2012 seeks to provide an alternative method of assessing edibility: the Food Warden. It uses an engineered strain of Bacillus subtilis to detect and report volatiles in spoiling meat. The introduced genetic construct uses a promoter to trigger a pigment coding gene. This promoter, identified by microarray analysis, is significantly up-regulated in the presence of volatiles from spoiling meat. The activity of the promoter regulates the expression of the pigment reporter and will be visible to the naked eye. For safe usage of the system, spores of our engineered strain are placed into one half of a semi-permeable capsule, the second containing a calibrated amount of nutrients. Breaking the barrier between the two compartments allows germination and growth, thereby activating the spoiling meat sensor.

In the lab

Design of the “Sticker”: semi-permeable capsule: bacteria are kept inside, volatiles can go through. Proof that Bacillus subtilis grows inside the sticker
Development of Biobrick psac-cm for Bacillus subtilis.
Easy cloning in Bacillus subtilis in Biobrick fashion for the first time! Advantages: easy to check, biobrick compatible, E. coli compatible, stable insertion into Bacillus subtilis chromosome.

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