Project Overview

Sensing is an essential aspect of engineering. We need information about the world to make intelligent efforts to manipulate it. Ideal sensors are reliable, accurate and unobtrusive. Plants as biosensors fulfill these requirements and have the further benefit of being inexpensive and self-reproducing.

Our aim is to use the lower plant Marchantia polymorpha as a flexible, open source biosensor. The input, processing and output abilities are each parceled into separate modules which are linked using transcription factors and inducible promoters. Modules can be interchanged, so by swapping one input or output for another, PhytoSpy can flexibly be used to sense any condition or chemical, and report it in any way that a module has been designed for. This modular framework allows many devices to be constructed from the same library of components.

Our dream is to produce input, processing and output modules in separate plants which can be combined through Mendelian crossing. We want to make plant biosensors accessible to the home enthusiast in the same way that electronics has been made accessible by Arduino.