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From 2011.igem.org

Future research

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• Millions of numbers

In the world exist a great number of biosensors that are responsible of detecting a specific factor but not all of them can tell exactly the amount of such factor. We propose a biosensor that can be capable of detecting a specific analyte and glows if this analyte is present. It’s also possible to see if there is a high or low concentration of the analyte by the color of the glow and to analyze the exact concentration with a flow cytometer.

• Switch off

Just as electrical energy, “if you are not using it…turn it off”, our mechanism is designed to be useful just when you need, when it matters. So this biosensor will contribute to a new era of intelligent designs where living organisms modified and engineered by human minds can be a great hit. As it had been set to express two kind of fluorescent proteins, this biosensor can be easily interpreted by anyone, being a great advantage for the use of it.

• Applications

The mechanism of the bacteria can be set for different analytes, giving the opportunity to expand the market of the biosensor to practically any industry. There are a lot of contaminants in the world and really few ways to determinate all of them. The practicality of this can be a great way to help the environment and companies to keep the world green.

• Medicine

• Intelligent medicines

The most important part of our mechanism is the switch created that can command the bacteria to start analyzing the factor and to stop analyzing it. This switch mechanism can be used in medicine to create new therapies that can be less invasive for the patients. If patients are into a difficult and invasive therapy to treat their sicknesses they can be treated by new therapies that help the patient to go throw their problem without suffering the complications created by the medicines given. By the switching of the action of certain cells, the mechanism can be used in the future to stop a cell giving certain medicine to the organism. This mechanism applied to genetic engineering and biotechnology can be helpful to provide a new and different solution to a big current trouble in health issues. For this reason we had decided to consider the use of this mechanism into intelligent medicines that replace the current medicines. The intelligent medicine would be a cell that takes a lecture of certain factor inside the body and release the medicine until is needed, so it can stop releasing such medicine when it is no longer needed. In illnesses that need a long time treatment to get health like cancer, the cell could be turned off in certain time so there would not be great damage to the body, and only when the person’s defense system is ready to get the medicines, the cell would work.

• Mouth clear

Considering the fact that in the whole world exist a great problem about caries and bacteria degrading the gums and teeth every day, we thought about a new and radical system to stop this problem. We would like to create an oral solution capable of work against the caries and bacteria in the mouth during all night while the person is sleeping. Our bacteria would attack the specific bacteria responsible for caries, bad breath and some other problems related to the care of the mouth. When you wake up at morning after taking the oral solution you wouldn’t have any bacteria and your mouth. Then you would light up your mouth in order to stop the bacteria doing their job and also give yourself a good smell for the mouth the rest of the day according to the color you light up your mouth. Green light would give a smell of limonene and blue light a smell of mint. These smells would be released by the bacteria and would be their signal to die.

• Domestic care

Two big problems presented at home when is time to clean are the fact that people doesn’t like to clean smelly places and the hard time to clean places really dirty. We propose a green solution to terminate with both problems by creating a cleaning solution with our bacteria. After cleaning the hard places at home with this new solution, the place cleaned should be lighted up to release a smell of limonene in the house. This should also work just as a home flavor in which the smell released could be changed by the color applied to the system. Also the mechanism could be stopped by applying yellow light directly to the system.