contribution
Contribution of microbial sensor model for detection of heavy metal pollution or other pollutants
Biosensors based on microbial fuel cell (MFC) have been widely developed as a new substitute for pollutant detection, which has the advantages of miniaturization, easy operation and low cost. As a low-power in-situ sensing tool, MFC biosensor mediated by synthetic biology has shown great potential in system design and engineering application in electrochemistry field. By combining different promoters and voltage output elements to design "AND" and "OR" circuit logic gates, modular genetic elements can be used to customize biosensors for analyzing various or multiple target pollutants. Therefore, the combination of synthetic biology and engineering will further expand the application potential of MFC biosensors in detecting specific substrates.
After genetic modification, Escherichia coli BL21 can express ribB and OprF with copper-sensitive promoter pcutR. They can synthesize porin and sense copper ions to produce riboflavin. Riboflavin promotes electron transport, and porin increases cell membrane permeability of engineering strains. The engineering strains were used in microbial fuel cell (MFC)-based biosensors, so we made a microbial sensor with simple detection process and suitable for real-time monitoring of copper pollution detection.
According to our microbial sensor model for heavy metal pollution detection, the future iGEM team can replace our copper-sensitive promoter with other substance-sensitive promoters, and the modified engineering bacteria can respond to different heavy metal ions or other pollutants in sewage. By using different engineering strains in biosensors based on microbial fuel cell (MFC), we have made different microbial sensors for detecting heavy metal pollution or other pollutants.