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Stéphane Pinhal, one of our multi-talented iGEM advisors, is currently a PhD student in microbiology and a self-proclaimed professional couch potato. At the beginning of our team’s iGEM adventure, we were lucky enough to get Stéphane to introduce us to the basic laboratory procedures required for running a project in synthetic biology, such as culturing bacteria or making them produce recombinant proteins. After several of these key training sessions, one main aspect that Stéphane kept stressing, much to his dismay I might add, was that working with living organisms sometimes requires great sacrifices. Coming into lab late on Sunday nights to inoculate your bacterial culture, or postponing your lunch break because your cells have just reached the right growth phase for transformation are classical examples of little inconveniences that are nearly incompatible with our beloved advisor’s lifestyle.
BUT… what if Stéphane could control his bacterial culture from home?
To make his dream come true, our team began to develop a bioelectronics system that enables full remote control of living cell concentration in shaken bacterial cultures… a device we call TalkE’coli.
Our system is based on KillerRed (KR), a fluorescent protein that produces Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) upon illumination with green light [1]. ROS, such as hydrogen peroxide (H202) or singlet oxygen (1O2), react with bacterial DNA and proteins, causing irreversible damages that ultimately lead to cell death (figure 2). Using KillerRed with illumination at different light intensities, we aim to control variations in the number of living E. coli bacteria of a liquid culture (figure 1).
