Synthetic Nanosensors Compatible with Plant Cells

According to a recent report by Nanowerk, Honolulu, Hi., USA, scientists have been challenged to leverage biosensors for use in eukaryotic cells — which comprise yeast, plants and animals — because strategies-to-date are limited in the molecules they can detect and the signals they can produce.

But now, a team of researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and Harvard Medical School (HMS) led by George Church, Ph.D., has developed a new method for engineering a broad range of biosensors to detect and signal virtually any desired molecule using living eukaryotic cells

Strikingly, the team successfully engineered Arabidopsis plants to act as multicellular botanical biosensors, containing a custom LBD to recognize the drug digoxin and a luminescent signal protein to emit light when digoxin is "detected." These Arabidopsis biosensors gave off fluorescence when the plants were exposed to digoxin, proving that whole organisms can visually light up to signal detection of an arbitrary molecule. An additional capability of the new biosensing methodology is the ability to connect it to gene regulators instead of fluorescent proteins. Such biosensors could precisely regulate gene transcription to improve yields of small molecules in organisms used for industrial biomass production in advanced materials.

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