Applied Design

We have developed a multicellular, modular biosensor development platform to usher in a new era of biosensors. The platform aims to ease the design, implementation, and characterisation/optimisation stages of biosensor development in the following ways:

In designing the sensynova framework, we researched how biosensors are currently developed. We found that parts were rarely reused between designs, since biosensor components are typically tightly coupled in a single cell type. It was also found that a great deal of effort was required to optimise biosensors and tune their characteristics. We wanted to develop a more convenient, modular approach to facilitate reuse and ease the optimisation process. Therefore, we propose an alternative, multicellular system for biosensor development with off-the-shelf, modular components. Novel biosensors can be developed simply by mixing three different cell types; a detector, processor and reporter. The biosensor response characteristics can be tuned simply by mixing different ratios of the three cell types.

To confirm that our design could successfully be applied to all biosensor systems, we undertook a systematic review of all biosensors previously made in iGEM to identify design patterns. We showed how other tightly coupled designs could be converted to our modular framework. We also designed and implemented a range detectors, processors and reporters for others to use.

We hope our approach will lead to the more rapid, cost-effective and efficient development of a new kind of multicellular biosensor that will ultimately impact on human health, the environment and industrial processes to name but few.