Team:Rensselaer/Project

Overall project
Our aim is to develop a novel, micro organism based, sensor using bioinformatics resources and molecular biology techniques. We will genetically modify E. Coli cells to produce various pigments in response to certain compounds in the immediate environment. In addition to simply detecting compounds, we propose to engineer a molecular machine sensitive enough to resolve and even quantify target compound concentrations. This can be achieved in two ways: (1) by measuring color intensity or (2) distinguishing color combinations. We believe that this design can be extrapolated to areas such as bioremediation or for the application of biosensors to test water contamination, given a certain concentration of contaminants. Our project could be further adapted towards the maintenance of homeostasis given metabolic disorders as well as the treatment of metabolic diseases by replacing pigment expression with pharmacological proteins.