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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 too high, an alarm system is switched on and thus warns people when the smoke could cause health damage.

Experiments are performed in ''Escherichia coli'' strains JM101 and DH5α.  

[[File:General Sensor System.png|300px|right|thumb|'''Biology circuits of SmoColi.'''

The system can be activated with sensors for different small molecules. ]]

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

Both a repressor (coupled to an inverter) or an activator can be used as sensor parts of the system. In our case we used AlcR (from ''aspergillus nidulans''), respectively XylR (from ''pseudomonas putida'') regulatory proteins in order to sense compounds present in smoke and thereby to induce the different parts of our network.

Upon sensing the specific molecule the circuit gets activated and our SmoColi bacteria start notifying us about the presence of toxic substances in air. This is done first by a moving GFP band and then by a red alarm signal.

 

For a detailed description of the circuit design please [https://2011.igem.org/Team:ETH_Zurich/Biology/Detector click here].

 

You can see details about how we designed our plasmids [https://2011.igem.org/Team:ETH_Zurich/Biology/MolecularMechanism on the following page] and details about the protocols we used [https://2011.igem.org/Team:ETH_Zurich/Biology/Cloning here].

 

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