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Team:Arizona State/Chimeric Reporter
From 2012.igem.org
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| + | Purified and extracted from the bacteria Streptomyces avidinii, Streptavidin posses a high binding affinity for biotin, with a dissociation constant of 10^-14–10^–16 M ( Laitinen et al.). With such high dissociation constant, the bonding of streptavidin to biotin is considered as one of the strongest non covalent bonding in nature. Due to the high binding affinity to biotin streptavidin serves as one of the major component of this project. | ||
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Revision as of 03:24, 4 October 2012
DNA Based Biosensor
Overview
There are various biosensors on the market but the state of the art technology is based upon Polymerase Chain Reaction and nanotechnology, which involves gold plated probes and requires specialized skills to use. Despite the extreme accuracy of the device, the affordability, and longer diagnostic time has made the technology scarce in the field. In order to make biosensing technology more accessible to those with few resources and the greatest need, the team worked on generating a cost effective, highly accurate and user-friendly organic biosensor. The components of the sensor will be produced in non-pathogenic E. coli. The sensor is made up of a protein head and DNA tail. The protein head is an enzyme that turns a colorless substrate (X-gal) blue. The enzyme is split in half, so that when the sensor is dissolved in water it cannot produce blue color. When pathogenic target DNA is present, two DNA sensor tails bind the target, the split enzyme assembles, and blue color is produced. Color provides a user-friendly output that is familiar to non-skilled users.
Streptavidin
Purified and extracted from the bacteria Streptomyces avidinii, Streptavidin posses a high binding affinity for biotin, with a dissociation constant of 10^-14–10^–16 M ( Laitinen et al.). With such high dissociation constant, the bonding of streptavidin to biotin is considered as one of the strongest non covalent bonding in nature. Due to the high binding affinity to biotin streptavidin serves as one of the major component of this project.
