An autonomous microbial sensor enables long-term detection of TNT explosive in natural soil.

Autor: Essington EA; Department of Chemical Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA., Vezeau GE; Department of Biological Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA., Cetnar DP; Department of Chemical Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA., Grandinette E; Department of Plant Pathology and Environmental Microbiology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA., Bell TH; Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada., Salis HM; Department of Chemical Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA. salis@psu.edu.; Department of Biological Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA. salis@psu.edu.; Department of Biomedical Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA. salis@psu.edu.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Nature communications [Nat Commun] 2024 Dec 02; Vol. 15 (1), pp. 10471. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Dec 02.
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-54866-y
Abstrakt: Microbes can be engineered to sense target chemicals for environmental and geospatial detection. However, when engineered microbes operate in real-world environments, it remains unclear how competition with natural microbes affect their performance over long time periods. Here, we engineer sensors and memory-storing genetic circuits inside the soil bacterium Bacillus subtilis to sense the TNT explosive and maintain a long-term response, using predictive models to design riboswitch sensors, tune transcription rates, and improve the genetic circuit's dynamic range. We characterize the autonomous microbial sensor's ability to detect TNT in a natural soil system, measuring single-cell and population-level behavior over a 28-day period. The autonomous microbial sensor activates its response by 14-fold when exposed to low TNT concentrations and maintains stable activation for over 21 days, exhibiting exponential decay dynamics at the population-level with a half-life of about 5 days. Overall, we show that autonomous microbial sensors can carry out long-term detection of an important chemical in natural soil with competitive growth dynamics serving as additional biocontainment.
Competing Interests: Competing interests: E.A.E., G.E.V., D.P.C., E.G., and T.H.B. declare no competing interests. H.M.S. is the founder of De Novo DNA.
(© 2024. The Author(s).)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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