ArticleMicrobial biotechnology2008
Tracing explosives in soil with transcriptional regulators of Pseudomonas putida evolved for responding to nitrotoluenes.
Article in Microbial biotechnology, 2008. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 29 papers.
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Who cites it
29 citing papers in PubMed, 91 citations in OpenAlex.
- Synthetic Biology of Plants and Microbes for Agriculture, Environment, and Future Applications.Chemical reviews · 2026Review
- Design of bacterial DNT sensors based on computational models.Nucleic acids research · 2026Article
- An autonomous microbial sensor enables long-term detection of TNT explosive in natural soil.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Penitentiaries: Bringing microbiological literacy to the fringes of society.Microbial biotechnology · 2024Article
- Enhancing DNT Detection by a Bacterial Bioreporter: Directed Evolution of the Transcriptional Activator YhaJ.Frontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology · 2022Article
- Bacterial bioreporters for the detection of trace explosives: performance enhancement by DNA shuffling and random mutagenesis.Applied microbiology and biotechnology · 2021Article
- The ChpR transcriptional regulator ofAccess microbiology · 2021Article
- Detection of buried explosives with immobilized bacterial bioreporters.Microbial biotechnology · 2021Article
- A protocatechuate biosensor forMetabolic engineering communications · 2018Article
- A standardized workflow for surveying recombinases expands bacterial genome-editing capabilities.Microbial biotechnology · 2018Article
- Complete alanine scanning of the Escherichia coli RbsB ribose binding protein reveals residues important for chemoreceptor signaling and periplasmic abundance.Scientific reports · 2017Article
- A growth- and bioluminescence-based bioreporter for the in vivo detection of novel biocatalysts.Microbial biotechnology · 2017Article
- Transcription factor levels enable metabolic diversification of single cells of environmental bacteria.The ISME journal · 2016Article
- Genetically engineered microorganisms for the detection of explosives' residues.Frontiers in microbiology · 2015Review
- Recent Advances in Genetic Technique of Microbial Report Cells and Their Applications in Cell Arrays.BioMed research international · 2015Review
- Transcription factor-based biosensors enlightened by the analyte.Frontiers in microbiology · 2015Review
- Biotechnological domestication of pseudomonads using synthetic biology.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2014Review
- Synthetic genomics and synthetic biology applications between hopes and concerns.Current genomics · 2013Article
- Evolution of antibiotic resistance, catabolic pathways and niche colonization.Microbial biotechnology · 2012Article
- Increasing signal specificity of the TOL network of Pseudomonas putida mt-2 by rewiring the connectivity of the master regulator XylR.PLoS genetics · 2012Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Although different biological approaches for detection of anti-personnel mines and other unexploded ordnance (UXO) have been entertained, none of them has been rigorously documented thus far in the scientific literature. The industrial 2,4,6 trinitrotoluene (TNT) habitually employed in the manufacturing of mines is at all times tainted with a small but significant proportion of the more volatile 2,4 dinitrotoluene (2,4 DNT) and other nitroaromatic compounds. By using mutation-prone PCR and DNA sequence shuffling we have evolved in vitro and selected in vivo variants of the effector recognition domain of the toluene-responsive XylR regulator of the soil bacterium Pseudomonas putida that responds to mono-, bi- and trinitro substituted toluenes. Re-introduction of such variants in P. putida settled the transcriptional activity of the cognate promoters (Po and Pu) as a function of the presence of nitrotoluenes in the medium. When strains bearing transcriptional fusions to reporters with an optical output (luxAB, GFP) were spread on soil spotted with nitrotoluenes, the signal triggered by promoter activation allowed localization of the target compounds on the soil surface. Our data provide a proof of concept that non-natural transcription factors evolved to respond to nitroaromatics can be engineered in soil bacteria and inoculated on a target site to pinpoint the presence of explosives. This approach thus opens new ways to tackle this gigantic humanitarian problem.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.