Designing sensors for environmental uranium detection

The ability to detect uranium (U) through environmental monitoring is of critical importance for informing water resource protection and nonproliferation efforts. While technologies exist for environmental U detection, wide-area environmental monitoring—sampling coverage over large areas not known to possess U contamination—remains a challenging prospect that necessitates the development of novel detection approaches. Livermore scientists have developed a whole-cell U sensor by integrating two functionally independent, U-responsive, two-component signaling systems, UzcRS and UrpRS, within a gate circuit in the bacterium Caulobacter crescentus. The researchers found that this combinatorial approach for constructing whole-cell sensors achieved greater selectivity in analyte detection than a prior biosensor developed with UzcRS alone. They confirmed the functionality of the sensor in an environmental context by detecting U in groundwater samples with very low U concentrations.

The paper detailing this research was recently included in a Department of Defense newsletter highlighting research advances in synthetic biology. This study was supported by the Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program (16-LW-055).

[D.M. Park and M.J. Taffet, Combinatorial Sensor Design in Caulobacter crescentus for Selective Environmental Uranium Detection, ACS Synth. Biol., available online March 21, 2019, doi: 10.1021/acssynbio.8b00484.]