Overview
In designing our worm to be the ultimate remediation tool, it is important for us to ask ourselves how we will know where our worms are and when they have finished their job. Thus, we have designed a reporter system using fluorescent protein so that we easily find our worm in soil samples while working in the field. This can make our worm a useful tool by making detection as easy and as simple as possible.
Using the fluorescence of our worm we may also tie the fluorescence into the GPCR detection or nahD degredation pathway. We can then use the worm's fluorescence as an approximate measure of how much of our target pollutants are being detected and degraded.
Construct: Fluorescent Worms
Our team successfully injected C. elegans with a reporter construct. The image below shows the AWB neuron expressing cyan fluorescence.
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