Distinguished iNANO Lecture by Professor Julius Lucks, Center for Synthetic Biology, Northwestern University, the USA

Professor Julius Lucks, Center for Synthetic Biology, Northwestern University, the USA

Cell Free Biosensors: Where have we gone and where are we going?

Cell-free biosensors have emerged as a powerful platform for detecting compounds ranging from environmental toxins to human health markers. Cell-free biosensors operate by repurposing and reengineering natural microbial regulatory mechanisms that detect compounds and generate detectable outputs in cell-free formats that can be freeze-dried and deployed at the point-of-need. Over the past 10 years we have introduced new approaches to expand the range of compounds that can be detected, improve sensitivity and specificity with programmable nucleic acid circuits, and innovate device formats that are accessible by everyone. In this talk I will review this progress and focus on cutting edge developments in materials interfaces, sensing mechanism expansion, and new modeling approaches to design biosensors. I will end by showcasing the impact of this technology through an ongoing field trial in Chicagoland, giving hundreds of households the opportunity to test the safety of their drinking water.