All biosensing platforms rest on two pillars ? specific biochemical recognition of a particular analyte and transduction of that recognition into a readily detectable signal. Most existing biosensing technologies utilize proteins that passively bind to their analytes, and therefore require wasteful washing steps, specialized reagents, and expensive instruments for detection. The PI proposes to develop a new class of engineered protein switches that can actively sense peptide-based analytes and directly produce an output signal only when the analyte is bound.
Intellectual Merit: Combining the actions of sensing and output signal generation into a single protein will result in protein switches that are suitable for use in portable biosensing devices that can be used in the field and by untrained individuals, significantly simplifying the quantification of peptide-based analytes in biological samples.
Broader Impacts: The technology developed in this proposal will serve as a foundation for the further development of devices capable of rapid detection of disease biomarkers in biological samples or pathogenic toxins from environmental sources. Funding for this project will support a team of undergraduate researchers to participate in a unique international research competition for biomolecular design (biomod.net) and also support an ongoing outreach program to promote interaction between local high school students from communities underrepresented in the sciences and researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.
This Project is jointly funded by CBET program at Engineering and Molecular Biophysics in the Division of Molecular and Cellular Sciences.
