Abstract
SummarySynthetic biology offers new tools and capabilities of engineering cells with desired functions for example as new biosensing platforms leveraging engineered microbes. In the last two decades, bacterial cells have been programmed to sense and respond to various input cues for versatile purposes including environmental monitoring, disease diagnosis and adaptive biomanufacturing. Despite demonstrated proof‐of‐concept success in the laboratory, the real‐world applications of microbial sensors have been restricted due to certain technical and societal limitations. Yet, most limitations can be addressed by new technological developments in synthetic biology such as circuit design, biocontainment and machine learning. Here, we summarize the latest advances in synthetic biology and discuss how they could accelerate the development, enhance the performance and address the present limitations of microbial sensors to facilitate their use in the field. We view that programmable living sensors are promising sensing platforms to achieve sustainable, affordable and easy‐to‐use on‐site detection in diverse settings.
Highlights
Microbial whole-cell biosensors (WCBs) use the sensing functions of natural or genetically engineered microbes to achieve target detection, and are gaining increasing interests for many applications ranging from environmental monitoring to disease diagnosis in the rising era of synthetic biology
Cell-free extracts comprising genetic sensors could be embedded on paper, providing a portable platform for easy-to-use and cost-effective on-site screening (Pardee et al, 2016; Takahashi et al, 2018), or in hydrogels acting as environment-responsive biomaterials (Whitfield et al, 2020)
Engineered living sensors have been pursued to fill the gaps left by conventional biosensing platforms by providing portable, easy-to-manufacture, cost-effective and rapidly programmable platforms for on-site detection
Summary
Citation for published version: Wan, X, Saltepe, B, Yu, L & Wang, B 2021, 'Programming living sensors for environment, health and biomanufacturing', Microbial biotechnology.
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