How to play minesweeper using E.Coli

As you certainly know a classic minesweeper has 4 options. Non mine cells opening without any event, fields next to a mine indicating how many mines they are close to (1,2,3,4...), mine cells itself ending the game until one is revealed and last but not least the flagging option to mark fields as mine fields.

The goal of the game is to reveal all non mine as fast as possible.

Actually to simulate the "click" we decided to add a substrate starting a reaction or expressing a reporter.To play this with E.coli we need first of all non mine cells expressing a neutral reporter. We also choose to use quorum sensing for the bacteria close to a mine cell to know about how many mines are close to our cell. For the mine cell we will use a second colony expressing a different reporter obviously. The non mine cells and mine neighbouring cells are the same colony an the expression of the different reporters will be regulated by a band-pass filter for quorum sensing
To play in a comfortable way the substrates will be mixed in one solution.
Finally for the flagging option a constitutive expressed reporter is used with a separate substrate.

Now you're ready to sweep baby !
But let's have a closer look...