From 2012.igem.org
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.
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