Team:Pittsburgh/Project Overview

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Office of the Provost Department of Bioengineering Department of Biological Sciences Department of Chemistry Swanson School of Engineering
IDT NEB Experiment

Learn more about how Hot Metal Switch works

Contents

Hot Metal Switch

Hot Metal Switch is a cell-free sensor that conditionally expresses lacZ only in the presence of the target metal, either lead or thallium. The metal ion detection is based on specific DNAzymes that are cleaved in the presence of their target metal. The released DNA strand activates a toehold switch regulated by the T7 promoter system, which will promote transcription of T3 RNA polymerase. The T3 RNA polymerase will activate the expression of lacZ, which will produce a color change visible to the naked eye. The T3 RNA polymerase will also activate additional expression of itself to amplify the original signal from the DNAzyme cleavage.

In Vitro Protein Synthesis

Genetic Circuit

DNAzyme

Toehold Switch

Reporter

Amplifier