Team:Wisconsin-Madison/alkane

In the production of large chain alkanes for biofuel production, it is crucial for there to be a rapid and accurate diagnostic for comparing production rates in engineered strains of E. coli. To develop an alkane biosensor, genes from Pseudomonas putida and Alcanivorax borkumensis were isolated and constructed into a pair of plasmids which code for proteins that bind to alkanes and then induce a promoter upstream of a red fluorescent protein. After gathering data at several different concentrations of alkane, a linear regression was produced, allowing for the quantification of an unknown ethanol concentration in a media based upon the level of fluorescence.