Cellock Holmes - A Case of Identity
"What is living in on the table in front of you?" seems to be an easy question to answer: microoganisms. However, which microorganisms are living on the table in front of you is not such a trivial question anymore, especially in environments where you only want to have a non-pathogenic microflora, or no microorganisms at all, such as lab spaces or health care institutions. Our project Cellock Holmes tries to solve this case of identy.
Cellock Holmes encompasses our 2D biosensing technology with which we want to enable detection of bacteria on solid surfaces. When developing Cellock Holmes, a main goal was to overcome shortcomings of excisting detection methods such as high cost, heavy and sensitive equipment, complicated handling and long detection times. Instead of inventing a mainly fancy concept for detecting bacteria, we wanted to create a biosensor that is
- inexpensive
- open source
- mobile
- fast
Improvement on the molecular and on the technical side of the biosensor go hand in hand in our project.
As a proof-of-concept project for Cellock Holmes we decided to detect the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa. This opportunistic bacterium mainly infects patients with open wounds and burns as well as immuneodeficient people. P. aeruginosa cells use quorum sensing to communicate with each other, and in doing so secrete autoinducers into their environment. Using Synthetic Biology, our team engineered sensor cells, so-called Cellocks, that are able to detect said autoinducers and to elicit a fluorescence signal that is then analyzed by our device WatsOn.
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