Welcome to Our Project!

Every year, Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC), the most common form of traveler’s diarrhea, affects thousands of deployed warfighters. The goal is to engineer non-pathogenic E. coli to sense ETEC, respond to its presence, and package it in a cellulose matrix to enable environmental detection of ETEC. We created two plasmids: ‘sense-respond’; and ‘packaging’. The sense-respond plasmid sensed Auto-Inducer 2 (AI-2), a quorum sensing molecule created by most ETEC strains, by expressing LsrR which switches on the Lsr promoter. Activation of the Lsr promoter expresses Super-Folder Green Fluorescent Protein (sfGFP), indicating the presence of ETEC. The packaging plasmid expresses a fusion protein consisting of curli fibers and cellulose binding domains. These modified surface proteins permit the bacteria to bind to cellulose, encapsulating the sense-response module. We envision this genetically engineered machine to be deployed in both the internal and external environment to detect ETEC.