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Reprogramming bacteria to detect diseases
Engineered bacteria promise to revolutionize diagnostics, therapeutics, or environmental remediation. Yet, many applications are precluded by the limited number of detectable signals. Here I will present our efforts to design a synthetic receptor platform enabling bacteria to respond to novel ligands. These transmembrane receptors are activated via ligand-induced dimerization of their ligand-binding domain and produce a transcriptional response through dimerization of their DNA-binding domains. I will discuss how we start to explore the design principles of synthetic receptors and will show our latest work in which we engineered a receptor enabling bacteria to detect and monitor liver diseases in clinical samples.