Contribution

Because our plasmid constructs consist of modular parts, much of our work can be carried over to future iGEM projects. For instance, while our work centers around discerning the presence of brain-related injuries, our sensing platform should detect any protein that has a synthesizable binder. We know this because the complementation systems we are using are derived from papers that had originally focused on detecting other peptides. In other words, the complementation systems are evidenced to reconstitute, even when bound to other proteins. But do these complementation systems work with physiological peptide binders specfically? To answer this, we designed binder controls to assess this possibility. Although we may not have enough time to validate these controls for our own system, we understand that future iGEM teams may find an opportunity to carry on what we could not. Since these controls have binders that have been characterized to associate with a specific peptide (like hormones, for example), future teams interested in evaluating complementation systems as functional peptide sensors may find these constructs useful. This is particularly true if they are trying to troubleshoot binders they have designed, and want to rule out the possiblity of the complementation system failing to reconstitute by attaching it to a functioning binder with historical data.