Team:Edinburgh/projectmain(overall)

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Our project is concerned with the detection of both the presence of TNT and nitrites/nitrates. We have designed two different pathways, each concerned with the detection of the mentioned substances. These will interconnect to give a different visual signal depending on the presence or absence of our target chemicals.

Before we proceed in a detailed explanation of the biological system it would be useful to demonstrate a simplified explanation of how our system would operate from a practical point of view. The first think to point out is that the bacteria are meant to be spread with an aeroplane over the affected areas and the colour pattern will be viewed over night. An overview of the visual outcome is shown in table 1.
The first limitation someone might find in this system is that if TNT alone is present then there is not going to be any visual outcome. This problem is solved by adding a TNT degrading enzyme to our chassis, namely a nitroreductase enzyme from Enterobacter cloacae (Pubmed entry:________, Biobrick #:________). This enzyme will be transcribed in the presence of TNT and will produce nitrites in the process of degrading TNT (Christopher E. French 1998). This, along with the fact that TNT is naturally degraded by other soil flora and fauna (Reference) allows us to be confident enough that TNT will always be present with nitrites in the soil overcoming this limitation.
Edinburgh University iGem Team 2009