Team:Guelph/Biosensor

Antibiotic Biosensor

Antibiotic resistance is a problem that is becoming increasingly difficult to manage as more and more microbes are being exposed to antibiotics in the environment. Tetracycline is an antibiotic with a wide range of applications such as acne and sexually transmitted disease management as well as a multitude of agricultural applications. Our inspiration stems from the ever-looming threat that we face as a result of antibiotic resistance. The University of Guelph is also heavily invested in agricultural sciences.

As such, we aspire to create a time- and cost-effective diagnostic test for agricultural antibiotic runoff using Escherichia coli to yield a color change in the presence of tetracycline in the field rather than shipping samples to a lab. We chose to use the violacein pathway to produce the color change because this pathway has multiple control points that may be implemented in the future for other variables. The success of this biosensor will ideally be able to be expanded to work with other antibiotics and control mechanisms.