BIOCARTE: Biosensors for in situ evaluation of bioavailability of pollutants based on transcriptional regulators à la carte

• Research unit: EU RFP
• Project number: 01.0615-1

Key words (English)

Biotechnology; Environmental Protection; Innovation; Technology Transfer; Life Sciences; Medicine; Health; Waste Management

Alternative project number (English)

EU project number: QLK3-CT-2002-01923

Research programs (English)

EU-programme: 5. Frame Research Programme - 1.1.3 The 'cell factory'

Short description (English)

See abstract

Abstract (English)

This Project exploits the properties of prokaryotic transcriptional regulators of the XylR/HbpR family to design à la carte regulators that will be employed to determine the bioavailability of nitro, bromo- and chloroaromatic chemicals and biphenylethers. The core of this proposal is the application of high-throughputc ombinatory genetic technologies to the protein module that sets the specificity of the response to distinct aromatics. This will allow the generation and selection of regulator variants able to recognize and to trigger responses to a large variety of chemical species. The selected proteins will be employed in various biosensor schemes through the coupling of the cognate promoters to genetically formatted lux and gfp reporters. This genetic standardisation will go in parallel with matching instrumentation, hardware and software suited for measuring the optical output of the system and its utilisation in the field.

References in databases (English)

Swiss Database: Euro-DB of the
State Secretariat for Education and Research
Hallwylstrasse 4
CH-3003 Berne, Switzerland
Tel. [phone]
Swiss Project-Number: 01.0615-1