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Natural cellular mechanisms are co-opted by synthetic biologists for use in biological sensors. Typical reporters such as GFP are only detectable inside living cells and used to gather information in the laboratory environment.
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Our system encodes sensing information into the amyloid protein curli within bacterial biofilms. Unlike common reporter proteins, curli fibers are highly resistant to degradation and can survive extreme pH and temperature changes extracellularly. Applying chromoproteins engineered to bind specifically to corresponding curli units, information is easily displayed.
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Biological sensing can be applied outside of the laboratory settings with information that is robust and can be easily read in a biomaterial with functional potential.
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