With our ever-expanding abilities to construct complex synthetic biology systems, facile, real-time monitoring techniques to assess the performance and dynamics of these systems must be concomitantly developed and understood. Electrochemical monitoring offers these capabilities, and here we demonstrate its application in a cell-based β-galactosidase reporter system. We characterize a novel system that reports on the concentration of the bacterial quorum sensing molecule autoinducer-2, and show an in-depth analysis of the correlation between the traditional (Miller assay) and electrochemical means of measuring the system’s response. We show that that the electrochemical assay not only works with lysed cells, as performed in the Miller assay, but also in live whole cells - allowing for continuous monitoring and linking genetic response to electronic output. We also provide a correlation of the lysed and whole cell responses that would allow predicting one from the other. Lastly, we present a generalized model for cell-based β-galactosidase reporter systems that could aid in building and predicting the electrochemical response of a variety of synthetic biology constructs. This first-ever in-depth analysis aims to shed light on and facilitate the use of electrochemical real-time monitoring in the synthetic biology field as well as open doors towards creating constructs that can more easily communicate information to electronic systems.

Electrochemical monitoring of synthetic biology constructs

249th National Meeting (2015)

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