Fluorescent Biosensor

It would be useful, indeed, to have a biosensor that could detect the metabolic activity with a living cell. To that end, researchers at Harvard’s Wyss Institute have designed an allosteric transcription factor protein of E. coli with green fluorescent protein, which responds to specific synthetic molecules. They then used high throughput combinatorial chemistry to search through thousands of engineered cells to see which ones most efficiently expressed transcription control, as the fluorescence indicated. There are thousands of allosteric transcription factor proteins which might be reconfigured into biosensors for all sorts of medical purposes.     MORE

Image Credit: Harvard’s Wyss Institute Press Release