"
Team:TU Delft-Leiden/WetLab/landmine
From 2014.igem.org
Landmine Module
Background Information
On the literature [1] a very interesting type of biosensor was found: two natural promoters of Escherichia coli (ybiJ and yqjF) were found to be activated in the presence of some aromatic N-based compounds such as 2,4,6-Trinitrotoluene (2,4,6-TNT), 2,4-Dinitrotoluene (2,4-DNT) and 1,3-Dinitrobenzene (1,3-DNB). Land mines are mainly composed of 2,4,6-TNT, but many times impurities of 2,4-DNT and 1,3-DNB are also present. These last two compounds are more volatile than 2,4,6-TNT and, therefore, tool they can more easily leak out of the land mine. As a consequence, Belkin and co-workers envisioned in the two aforementioned promoters (ybiJ and yqjF) a high potential to develop a biosensor for land mine detection.
This was a very attractive case of study to implement the Plug-and-Play biosensor based on electrical current developed by our team.
References
[1] S. Yagur-Kroll, S. Belkin et al., “Escherichia Coli bioreporters for the detection of 2,4-dinitrotoluene and 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene”, Appl. Microbiol. Biotechnol. 98, 885-895, 2014.
