For our projet, we focused on air pollution. We had an in-depth reflexion about the existing measurement techniques, and found out that, among all the existing devices, none of them was satisfying. During our benchmark, we also realized that most of these devices were placed on fixed measurement station, and that they were by consequent unable to give precise results on a smaller scale, which are more and more needed du to the ever-increasing health concerns. Learn all the details of why we believe our project can be a real breakthrough in terms of air pollution measurement.

We started to work on a biosensor, a modified cell able to respond to a given signal. The goal of our cell would be to respond to the detection of a specific pollutant by emitting bioluminescence. We used the XylR protein, known to bind to molecules such as the toluene and benzene (two important pollutants), and once bound to activate the Pu promoter. Activation of this promoter would then trigger luciferase synthesis, allowing bioluminescence. Once our biosensor plasmid assembled, we used E. coli bacteria as a chassis organism.