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Team:Cambridge-JIC
From 2014.igem.org
Project Description
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 unobtrusive. Plants as biosensors fulfill these requirements and have the further benefit of being inexpensive and self-reproducing.
Our aim is to use the lower plant Marchantia Polymorpha as a flexible biosensor. The input, processing and output functionality is parceled into modules which are linked using metabolites and inducible promoters. The modules can be interchanged, allowing many devices to be constructed from the same library of components.
Our dream is to produce input, processing and output plants which can be combined through Mendelian crossing. We want to make plant biosensors accessible to the home enthusiast in the same way that Arduino makes electronics accessible.
