Team:Brown

Around the world, contamination of drinking water is an immense problem that is difficult and expensive to detect with current technology. As such, many Third World countries are unable to effectively diagnose the problem across the millions of water supply sources that exist. There is a need for an economically feasible, transportable, and user-friendly detection system for water contamination that can reliably be used in the field.

Our work focuses on designing and implementing a novel biosensor that reports information back in a simple electric signal. Our biosensor will have the ability to detect the presence of certain inducers (for example a water contaminant or toxin), and report that information back via a change in the conductance of the bacterial solution. An inducer specific promoter transcribes and leads to the subsequent translation of a “Lysis Gene Cassette.” Lysis of the bacteria results in the release of the bulk intracellular ionic content into the surrounding media, causing the solution’s conductivity to increase, thereby indicating the presence of the inducer.