Overview

Sensing is an essential aspect of engineering: we need information about the world to make intelligent efforts to manipulate it. Biosensors allow us to detect compounds and the environment using genetically-enhanced life forms, harnessing specialised functions evolved over millions of years. At present, the creation of such biosensors requires expert knowledge and dedicated facilities.

Plants as biosensors have the potential to make this a reality – vastly improving access to the technology with the further benefit of being inexpensive and self-reproducing. Marchantia polymorpha is a plant chassis that makes an exceptional candidate:

• It’s transformable; it can be modified for characteristics that suit a range of applications.

• It’s small, and transformant lines can be shipped as spores and stored for at least 1 year.

• It’s fast growing, with a one month generation cycle dominated by a haploid phase, and a transformation protocol that takes less than 2 weeks.

We are introducing Marchantia polymorpha as a flexible, open source biosensor.

mösbi is a modular, open-source biosensing platform developed using a novel, user-friendly plant chassis: Marchantia polymorpha. The mösbi biosensors consist of 3 modules: input, output and processing. The user is free to mix-and-match the modules to create custom biosensors simply by crossing the chosen modules’ pre-transformed plant lines and collecting the progeny. mösbi's open-source nature allows users to create and modify modules ensuring its continuous evolution. In farming, homes, and education - mösbi will change the way we view biosensors.

Our Design

Our 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.