A Novel Bioelectronic Reporter System in Living Cells Tested with a Synthetic Biological Comparator

As the fields of biotechnology and synthetic biology expand, cheap and sensitive tools are needed to measure increasingly complicated genetic circuits. In order to bypass some drawbacks of optical fluorescent reporting systems, we have designed and created a co-culture microbial fuel cell (MFC) system for electronic reporting. This system leverages the syntrophic growth of Escheriachia . coli ( E . coli ) and an electrogenic bacterium Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 ( S . oneidensis ). The fermentative products of E . coli provide a carbon and electron source for S . oneidensis MR-1, which then reports on such activity electrically at the anode of the MFC. To further test the capability of electrical reporting of complicated synthetic circuits, a novel synthetic biological comparator was designed and tested with both fluorescent and electrical reporting systems. The results suggest that the electrical reporting system is a good alternative to commonly used optical fluorescent reporter systems since it is a non-toxic reporting system with a much wider dynamic range.