Application of Protein-based Biosensors in Detection of Novel Therapeutics & Environmental Monitoring

Proteins play a vital role in a living system. Any malfunctions lead to a serious genetic disease. In recent years, thousands of genes been discovered, each with specific functions. The development of tools for controlling their function is a challenging task and researchers have been working on it for decades. Proteins have been used as molecular switches to construct biosensors. In this work, an engineered protein-based bacterial biosensor has been introduced as a tool for detection of potential ligands to nuclear hormone receptor proteins. The modular design of the biosensor protein allows us to swap the receptor protein and create new biosensors easily. The study has been extended to receptor proteins across different species and tested with a library of chemicals. A pre-synaptic protein, neurexin, known to play a role in neurodevelopmental disorders has been incorporated into the biosensor and could potentially lead to new avenues in discovery of new therapeutics. Techniques including nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) have been used to confirm the binding. A detailed study on the mechanism of biosensors has been presented which can lead to intelligent design of next generation biosensors.