New Tools for Rapid and Sensitive Detection of Water Contamination: Whole-Cell Biosensors and Cell-Free TX-TL Systems

Abstract

Rapid, sensitive and user-friendly detection of water contaminants is a key factor for on-site response to terrorist attack or accidental toxic release. To this end, we developed and compared different biosensors based on living cells and transcriptional-translational cell-free system (TX-TL) using different optical reporter genes. Analytical performances such as response time, limit of detection and dynamic range of the different combinations were profiled to assess the best candidate of this application. To date, bioluminescent NanoLuc luciferase proved to be the best reporter gene for both the configurations independently from target analyte.