Bioelectronic Devices Enable Real-Time Sensing

If a chemical spill in a river goes unnoticed for 20 minutes, it might be too late to remediate. Living bioelectronic sensors developed by a team of researchers at the Rice University can help. A team led by Rice synthetic biologists Caroline Ajo-Franklin and Jonathan (Joff) Silberg and lead authors Josh Atkinson and Lin Su, both Rice alumni, have engineered bacteria to quickly sense and report on the presence of a variety of contaminants. Their study in Nature shows the cells can be programmed to identify chemical invaders and report within minutes by releasing a detectable electrical current.