Building a Biosensor as Part of a Synthetic Biology and Computer Science Pre-REU Pilot Program — Presentation Detail — Celebration of Scholars

Additional Information

More information is available at carthage.edu/celebration-scholars/. The following are members of the Research, Scholarship, and Creativity Committee who are eager to listen to ideas and answer questions:

Thomas Carr
Katherin Hilson
Kim Instenes
John Kirk
Sarah Terrill

Building a Biosensor as Part of a Synthetic Biology and Computer Science Pre-REU Pilot Program

Name: Stefanie Huttelmaier
Major: Environmental Science, Biology
Hometown: Kenosha, WI
Faculty Sponsor: Deborah Tobiason
Other Sponsors: Mahoney, Mark
Type of research: Independent research
Funding: NSF

Name: Jacob Haag
Major: Neuroscience
Hometown: Lodi, WI
Faculty Sponsor: Deborah Tobiason
Other Sponsors: Mahoney, Mark
Type of research: Independent research
Funding: NSF

Name: James Hasbrouck
Major: Computer Science
Hometown: Wheaton, IL
Faculty Sponsor: Deborah Tobiason
Other Sponsors: Mahoney, Mark
Type of research: Independent research
Funding: NSF

Abstract

Synthetic Biology and Computer Science were merged together

during a four week bootcamp focused on introducing students

from different disciplines to the interdisciplinary nature of

synthetic biology research during a collaborative project between

students at Simmons College and Carthage College. The project

involved building new biobricks to produce a biosensor for

toluene, which is an environmental contaminant that is the

byproduct of oil contamination. Current methods for detecting

toluene levels require expensive, time consuming techniques. By

building a biosensor, a more affordable, transportable, faster

method of toluene detection is possible. Our work was based on

the toluene sensor built by Stiner and Haverson (AEM, 2002) in

Pseudomonas. The biosensor segments were cloned into iGEM

biobrick vectors in order to create biobricks containing the

inducible toluene promoter and activator protein in Escherichia

coli. These biobricks can be readily used with a variety of reporter

genes to create new versions of the toluene biosensor. Once

these new toluene sensors are constructed, they will be analyzed

for sensitivity in order to choose the optimum reporter-sensor

combination in E. coli. In addition to the biosensor research, all

students in the bootcamp learned to program using Python and to

build tools to help with their cloning strategy. Building customized

computer programs to optimize our synthetic biology research is a

major goal of this collaborative project.

Poster file

Submit date: March 15, 2016, 5:49 p.m.