ArticleNature chemical biology2019
Cascaded amplifying circuits enable ultrasensitive cellular sensors for toxic metals.
Article in Nature chemical biology, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 105 papers.
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Who cites it
105 citing papers in PubMed, 282 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Towards real-time additive-free dopamine detection at 10Nature communications · 2026Article
- Construction of synthetic protein-binding non-genetic DNA systems in living cells.Nature chemistry · 2026Article
- Engineering Biosensors to Enhance Monoterpene Indole Alkaloid Production in Yeast.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Review
- Visual detection of collective highly toxic metals in water by a handheld whole-cell biosensing detector: From circuit to field.iScience · 2026Article
- Programming Next-Generation Synthetic Biosensors by Genetic Circuit Design.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Review
- Bacteria as living biosensors for DNA.Nature reviews bioengineering · 2026Article
- Synthetic Biology of Plants and Microbes for Agriculture, Environment, and Future Applications.Chemical reviews · 2026Review
- Engineered probiotics that sequester arsenite in a mouse gastrointestinal system.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Engineered living glues secrete therapeutic proteins for treatment of inflammatory bowel disease.Nature biotechnology · 2026Article
- A therapeutic glue that autonomously targets gut bleeding in inflammatory bowel disease.Nature biotechnology · 2026Article
- Synthetic Whole-Cell Bioelectronic Chemical Sensing withChem & bio engineering · 2025Article
- Extending dynamic and operational range of the biosensor responding to l-carnitine by directed evolution.Synthetic and systems biotechnology · 2025Article
- Optimized genetic circuitry and reporters for sensitive whole-cell arsenic biosensors: advancing environmental monitoring.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2025Article
- A cell-free biosensor signal amplification circuit with polymerase strand recycling.Nature chemical biology · 2025Article
- Engineering a New SsrA-Based Degradation Tag (LAA-LAA) and a Bacterial Synthetic Oscillator.ACS synthetic biology · 2025Article
45 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Cell-based biosensors have great potential to detect various toxic and pathogenic contaminants in aqueous environments. However, frequently they cannot meet practical requirements due to insufficient sensing performance. To address this issue, we investigated a modular, cascaded signal amplifying methodology. We first tuned intracellular sensory receptor densities to increase sensitivity, and then engineered multi-layered transcriptional amplifiers to sequentially boost output expression level. We demonstrated these strategies by engineering ultrasensitive bacterial sensors for arsenic and mercury, and improved detection limit and output up to 5,000-fold and 750-fold, respectively. Coupled by leakage regulation approaches, we developed an encapsulated microbial sensor cell array for low-cost, portable and precise field monitoring, where the analyte can be readily quantified via displaying an easy-to-interpret volume bar-like pattern. The ultrasensitive signal amplifying methodology along with the background regulation and the sensing platform will be widely applicable to many other cell-based sensors, paving the way for their real-world applications.
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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.