A Synthetic Biology Approach to Developing Optical NanoAnalytics

Descripción del proyecto

Los nanotubos de carbono son un faro de luz en los biosensores de alta sensibilidad

La naturaleza constituye a menudo una fuente de inspiración para científicos e ingenieros y la detección es probablemente una de las funciones más importantes para las aplicaciones biomédicas. A menudo, los científicos buscan reproducir capacidades de la naturaleza y, cada vez más, son capaces de superarlas, especialmente cuando se utilizan moléculas y procesos biológicos como componentes de sofisticados sistemas de producción humana. El proyecto financiado con fondos europeos NanoBiOptics tiene previsto aprovechar las ventajas combinadas de biomateriales como los ácidos nucleicos artificiales y nanomateriales como los nanotubos de carbono monocapa. El uso de técnicas de bioingeniería permitirá a los científicos superar las limitaciones inherentes a los nanosensores diseñados en la actualidad y dará lugar a una nueva generación de sensores ópticos de alta sensibilidad para la detección de bioanalitos.

Objetivo

Bioengineering is the synthetic biologists approach to engineering materials. It allows researchers to overcome billions of years of evolution to create unnatural biomolecules equipped with interactions unfounded in nature. Biomolecules offer unparalleled molecular recognition that can be tuned by engineers to create highly specific sensors. Unfortunately, biology has its limits; many biological optical sensors rely on fluorophores with limited lifetimes and visible emissions that overlap with tissue absorption. Unlike these fluorophores, single-walled carbon nanotubes benefit from fluorescence that is indefinitely photostable, demonstrating sensitivities that can detect analytes down to the single molecule. Their near-infrared wavelengths are also transparent to tissue absorption, allowing for continuous in vivo sensing. Unfortunately, these nanomaterials lack the molecular recognition biology has to offer.

In a sense, the advantages and disadvantages posed by the fields of bio- and nano-materials engineering are highly complementary. This proposal envisions a new generation of NanoBiOptic devices devices that exploit the synergy of nano-bio hybrids for sensing applications. We aim to bring to the nanosensor community what directed evolution has brought to chemistry; a guided approach to tuning interactions. We apply bioengineering techniques, such as artificial nucleic acid design as well as directed evolution, to circumvent current limitations in engineering nanosensors. In demonstrating these techniques, we realize previously intractable optical platforms for bioanalyte detection, as well as a single-molecule basis for imaging DNA-protein interactions, such as those found in CRISPR. Synthetic biology thus has the potential to complement the physical sciences in the engineering of new synthetic optical platforms, enabling a revolution through evolution of synthetic nanomaterials.