Team:Leeds
From 2013.igem.org
A biological system designed to detect the presence of pathogens in water samplesMicro-Beagle is a novel reporter system for E-coli that, as an iGEM first, has been designed to dynamically detect arbitrary target solids (including other cells) through a mechanism activated by cell surface binding. Micro-Beagle was initially developed to address the need for a low cost, energy efficient and robust tool to be used to assess the effectiveness of current water purification systems. As the Micro-Beagle is intended to operate at a low cost it is ideal for use in low-income areas where the testing of water purification techniques cannot be maintained at an acceptable frequency. Micro-Beagle is designed to also be a modular system, utilising Ice Nucleation Protein to express and position target-binding peptides on the cell surface. Target binding induces membrane stress that activates the Cpx signalling pathway, and Micro-Beagle thus utilises a promoter from this pathway (pCpxR) to initiate expression of a reporter protein, such as GFP. As a proof of concept, we have used silica beads as a model diagnostic target (a pathogen surrogate) and the silica-binding “Si4” sequence as the target-binding peptide. We foresee Micro-Beagle being adapted for both the detection of waterborne pathogens and a variety of other diagnostic applications, and we envision future multisensor Micro-Beagles in which diverse pathogens can be simultaneously and quantitatively measured from a single water sample.
The Leeds 2013 iGEM teamWe are the Leeds 2013 iGEM team, We are a group of undergrads from various courses at the University of Leeds, all with a passion for synthetic biology!
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