Celluar Lead Sensor
Lead poisoning is a public health concern - there is lead in soil, paint, water, and dust. Lead Poisoning is often caused by ingesting contaminated drinking water, or soil. It can cause neurological and gastrointestinal disorders, especially among children.
The legal limit of lead in drinking water is 15 parts per billion.
Current ways of testing for lead either require expensive chemical lab analysis or involve inaccurate home kits.
A lead detector, based on E. Col, is cheap, sensitive, quick, and specific
Our system involves a Lead detecting promoter, an amplifier, and an output of GFP. We're also working on a system to remove false positives.
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Tristable Switch
The Tri-Stable Toggle Switch represents a continuation on the theme of the Toggle Switch begun by Gardner, et al 2000. The switch can be turned to one of three different outputs and will remain stable until a new input is added to the system. Applications for this system have been suggested such as cellular memory. Our approach to solving the switch is based on quantitative measurements in pioneering effort to establish a standardized means of designing and debugging biological systems. the Gardner paper presented a mathematical model of the system to illustrate important parameters.
This project provides proof of concept for an "n"-stable Toggle Switch.
The purpose of the Tri-stable Toggle Switch is to produce three distinct, continuous, and stable outputs in response to three distinct inputs. These three inputs are three separate chemicals which will each induce one state of the switch.
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