Project Mosbi 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 intuitive. Plants as biosensors have the potential to fulfil these requirements with the further benefit of being inexpensive and self-reproducing. Marchantia polymorpha is a plant chassis that makes an exceptional candidate:

We are introducing Marchantia polymorpha as a flexible, open source biosensor using a modular genetic circuit. Our aim is to produce input, processing and output modules in separate plants that can be recombined through Mendelian crossing. Our dream is to make plant biosensors accessible to the home enthusiast in the same way that electronics has been made accessible by Arduino.

The genetic framework consists of three modules: input, processing and output. These modules are linked using transcription factors and inducible promoters. By interchanging inputs and outputs, Mösbi can be designed and adapted to sense myriad conditions or chemicals indicated by reporters that suit the user context. The flexibility of this modular framework allows many devices to be constructed from the same library of components.