Description

We aim to produce a toolbox that can be used to construct biosensors. This toolbox will contain devices which can be used to construct biosensors. As the toolbox will contain various devices, as well as chassis, several properties and functionalities for biosensors are possible. To assist with design and development the toolbox will contain in silico tools.

We also aim to develop a biosensor development technique which allows easy and rapid development and testing of biosensor variants. Each device in our toolbox can be expressed in a separate cell and co-cultured with other cells expressing different devices to produce a functional biosensor. For example, three cell strains expressing an inducible promoter (detector device), a signal amplification device (processing device), and a fluorescent protein (reporter device) can be co-cultured together to make a biosensor. Devices in each cell will communicate through the use of 'connectors', which take the form of quorum sensing molecules.

To surpass beyond the lab we want to contribute to the biological community. We aim to highlight the need for our toolbox, by conducting an investigation into the progression of biosensors from research to distribution, as well as the availability of and demand for biosensors. How often biosensors successfully progress from design to distribution, and identification of and issues encountered at each stage of this progression will be investigated, and the results implemented into the toolbox, aiming to help overcome these issues.