Molecular Design

Sensing

Every project needs a start, in our case this is the sensor or sensors of ours Cellular Logbook. Our system can be hooked up to any sensor that results in an transcriptional event. This is much in the same fashion as more classical reporters (e.g. GFP) weren't it for the possibility to measure multiple signals at the same time and the theoretical properties that can be derived from a methylation based system (time of signal onset or event intensity/ concentration indication). These theoretical properties where studied in great detail (in silicon). Sadly due to time and manpower constraints we where not able to implement this multi-sensor. More about how we would like to implement this can be found in the Expansion section.

Considerations

For our proof of concept we chose to individual implement two sensors. Our first sensor utilises the Lac hybrid (R0011) together with a medium/weak ribosomal binding site (R0032) in order to sense IPTG in the medium. This sensor was chose with the following properties in mind:

• Well characterised promoter
  With over 6 teams that used and characterized the lac hybrid promoter it is one of the most widely used promoters in the registry.