APPLICATIONS

The beauty of mösbi is its flexibility. This flexibility is directly reflected in its many applications. Here we outline the more prominent use categories of mösbi biosensors.

Imagine for a second having a small rack of different mösbi biosensor variants at the comfort of your home, sitting on a window sill. One of these mösbis could be constructed to detect a specific hormone in your food – for example by pairing an oestrogen-sensitive input module with a chromoprotein output one could detect for the presence of oestrogen in a certain food item. Similarly by creating a specific pollutant-sensitive aptamer-hammerhead ribozyme the presence of it could be detected in your local water supply.

On a different note, temperature-sensitive promoter inputs could be grouped with a smell-producing or chromoprotein output, resulting in the signal being detectable when the ambient temperature reaches the given threshold.

The nutrient profile of soil could be easily screened using nutrient-starvation promoter input modules – e.g. phosphate-starvation inducible promoter. In this way a small scale farmer could avoid the costs and times associated with professional soil profile screenings. Furthermore adjustments to the method of application and type of fertiliser used could be derived based on these results, resulting in a more eco-friendly and economic use of fertiliser on small size farm holdings.

Perhaps the most striking feature of mösbi biosensors would be their potential use in education. Primary and secondary education institutions could use mösbi to teach their students about genetic engineering, plant biology and synthetic biology using this ultimate user-friendly chassis. As stated beforehand, educating younger generations about the reality of genetic engineering and synthetic biology is likely to dismiss many of the misconceptions associated with them and emphasise the importance of these in the near future. Not to mention the fun factor awakened within kids and teenagers playing around with mösbi and unleashing their creativity!

mösbi would also be used in the education of adults. Similarly to schools, this would help in putting synthetic biology in the right perspective – all through a harmless and playful plant.

By deciding to develop mösbi on an open-source mentality we ensure the continuity of the project. We certainly need to consider the limitations mösbi would give to the average lay user – such as the development of new modules, processing module functionality, framework limitations etc. This is however where the savvier, adventurous scientifically-educated community would take over – developing new modules, altering the framework and driving the project forward through the years. With new viewpoints and creative inflows, new applications are bound to arise.

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