Food borne illness is a serious public health issue; once distributed, food tainted with pathogenic bacteria can cause widespread infection before contamination is realized and food recalled.  Current laborious methods of pathogen detection could benefit from the sensitive molecular-recognition capabilities of cells.  The expression of bacterial virulence is primarily coordinated by a communicative process known as quorum sensing (QS).  Accordingly, we have engineered surveyor cells that fluorescently report the presence of autoinducer-2, a signaling molecule used for quorum sensing.  By manipulating the quorum sensing circuitry of the surveyor cell, it monitors for signaling occurring between bacteria, and upon recognition of autoinducer-2, the surveyor cell then expresses a surface-displayed streptavidin binding protein, rendering it purifiable for the retrieval and concentration of fluorescent readout.  Moreover, neighboring surveyor cells coordinate their responses enabling an amplification of the original signal and concentration of signal output. Furthermore, we have engineered the  sensitivity of the surveyor cells by tuning the QS �switch� at specific thresholds of autoinducer signaling.  By our characterization data, we have demonstrated that quorum sensing, while natively used by bacteria to coordinate multi-cellular behavior, could in fact be harnessed as a counterstrategy for their detection.

Cell surveillance of quorum sensing toward reporting the presence of contamination

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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