Team:ETH Zurich/Biology

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Revision as of 15:52, 19 September 2011

Can you feel the smoke tonight?

Biology
Overview of the biology part

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SmoColi is a bacterial system which is able to sense and quantify smoke in the air. The quantification of smoke works in the same way as a thermometer: A band of GFP gets shifted along an axis depending on the concentration of smoke sensed by the bacteria. If the amount of smoke gets to high, an alarm system is switched on and thus warns people when the smoke could cause health damage.

SmoColi can be used in channels and tubes of different sizes depending on the application field. Because of the simple setup of the system it is a convenient mean to define concentrations of sensor molecules from air probes. It could be used for example as a rapid test to quantify specific molecules in probes.

Biology circuits of SmoColi. Our system can be activated with sensors for different small molecules.

The SmoColi circuit design can be devided into three different parts:

1. a sensor

2. bandpass filter

3. alarm system

Both a repressor (coupled to an inverter) or an activator can be used as sensor parts of the system.

More details about the sensors used in our setup can be found here.

Upon sensing the specific molecule the bandpass filter gets activated and results in a green band of GFP. The higher the concentration of the inducer molecule, the longer the distance which the band moves along the tube. The sensor device is also coupled to an AHL-dependent alarm system. If the inducer molecule exceeds a certain threshold value, no more AHL will be produced and the cells turn red.

For the detailed description of our circuit design please click here.

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 [[File:ETH SmoColi.png|200px|left|thumb|'''.''' ]]
+SmoColi is a bacterial system which is able to sense and quantify smoke in the air. The quantification of smoke works in the same way as a thermometer: A band of GFP gets shifted along an axis depending on the concentration of smoke sensed by the bacteria. If the amount of smoke gets to high, an alarm system is switched on and thus warns people when the smoke could cause health damage.
+SmoColi can be used in channels and tubes of different sizes depending on the application field. Because of the simple setup of the system it is a convenient mean to define concentrations of sensor molecules from air probes. It could be used for example as a rapid test to quantify specific molecules in probes.
 |}
 {|class="roundContainer"
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 [[File:General Sensor System.png|300px|right|thumb|'''Biology circuits of SmoColi.'''
 Our system can be activated with sensors for different small molecules. ]]
-SmoColi is a sensing and degrading system for different toxic small molecules in smoke. By degradation a gradient of the small molecule in the tube is produced. With a given Input by the small molecule, a bandpassfilter which consists of a low pass- and a high passfilter is activated resulting in a green GFP band at a certain concentration. A second high pass filter for very high concentration was inculed as an alarm system to turn the whole system red.
+The SmoColi circuit design can be devided into three different parts:
+.	a sensor
+.	bandpass filter
+.	alarm system
+Both a repressor (coupled to an inverter) or an activator can be used as sensor parts of the system.
+More details about the sensors used in our setup can be found here.
+Upon sensing the specific molecule the bandpass filter gets activated and results in a green band of GFP. The higher the concentration of the inducer molecule, the longer the distance which the band moves along the tube. The sensor device is also coupled to an AHL-dependent alarm system. If the inducer molecule exceeds a certain threshold value, no more AHL will be produced and the cells turn red.
+For the detailed description of our circuit design please click here.
 |}