Our project in a nutshell

Summary of our project

The 2014 EPFL iGEM team has been working on showing that biologically engineered organisms can detect and process signals in fast and efficient ways. With this in mind, our team worked on bringing forward a novel idea: combining Protein Complementation techniques to Biosensors to achieve fast spatiotemporal analysis of bacterial response to stimuli.

As a proof of concept of this idea, we aimed to develop a BioPad: a biological TouchPad made of touch responsive bacteria in a microfluidic chip allowing the control of electronic devices. This was done by engineering the Cpx Pathway – a two component regulatory system responsive to periplasmic stress.

Why a BioPad ?

The biological concepts behind the BioPad project have applications both in basic and applied sciences. From a purely scientific perspective, the ideas introduced and implemented by our project are novel and promising for future applications. The BioPad is also an attractive concept that is tangible for the general public and will allow people to look at synthetic biology in a different way. Hence, the combination of novel biological concepts, a cool idea, and the community awareness that our project provides, makes the BioPad project perfect for iGEM !

The BioPad's applications

With respect to basic sciences, our system serves as a good proof that protein complementation techniques are ideal for the creation of fast responding biosensors – especially in the case of two component regulatory systems. The introduction of the split IFP1.4 (Infrared Fluorescent Protein) into the registry will allow future iGEM and research teams to take advantages of the reversibility and precision of this protein. As such, our project should be viewed as novel in its kind. We encourage future iGEM teams to implement the concepts developed by the EPF Lausanne team in other contexts to build faster and better biosensors !

As for applied sciences, the potential uses of the BioPad include the delivery of a cheap, fast, efficient, and accurate antibiotic screening systems enabling an easy way to quantify how antibiotics affect the periplasm in gram negative bacteria; the BioPad project could also be the source of an "antibiotic complement" drug allowing could also provide a new way to study genes by allowing the examine the relationship between genes and their corresponding activating signals;