ArticleNature communications2019
Dynamic and tunable metabolite control for robust minimal-equipment assessment of serum zinc.
Article in Nature communications, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers.
What it found
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed.
- Microfluidic-Based Whole-Cell Biosensor Systems-Challenges and Future Applications.Biosensors · 2026Review
- Whole-cell biosensors with regulatory circuits based on a synthetic dual-input promoter enabling the highly sensitive detection of ultra-trace CdSynthetic and systems biotechnology · 2026Article
- From detection to remediation: the potential of phosphomelanin in sustainable environmental solutions.Frontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology · 2025Article
- Microbes Saving Lives and Reducing Suffering.Microbial biotechnology · 2025Article
- Microbial biosensors for diagnostics, surveillance and epidemiology: Today's achievements and tomorrow's prospects.Microbial biotechnology · 2024Review
- Research and application of intelligent diagnosis and treatment engineering bacteria.Frontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology · 2024Review
- A Cell-Free Biosensor for Assessment of Hyperhomocysteinemia.ACS synthetic biology · 2023Article
- Synthetic biology-inspired cell engineering in diagnosis, treatment, and drug development.Signal transduction and targeted therapy · 2023Review
- Metabolic engineering of the carotenoid biosynthetic pathway toward a specific and sensitive inorganic mercury biosensor.RSC advances · 2022Article
- HarnessingACS synthetic biology · 2022Article
- Detection of environmental pollutant cadmium in water using a visual bacterial biosensor.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Anthocyanin biosynthetic pathway switched by metalloregulator PbrR to enable a biosensor for the detection of lead toxicity.Frontiers in microbiology · 2022Article
- Recent advances in bacterial biosensing and bioremediation of cadmium pollution: a mini-review.World journal of microbiology & biotechnology · 2021Review
- Theranostic cells: emerging clinical applications of synthetic biology.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2021Review
- Metabolic Dynamics inACS synthetic biology · 2021Article
- Programmable receptors enable bacterial biosensors to detect pathological biomarkers in clinical samples.Nature communications · 2021Article
- Indigoidine biosynthesis triggered by the heavy metal-responsive transcription regulator: a visual whole-cell biosensor.Applied microbiology and biotechnology · 2021Article
- Development of a bioavailable Hg(II) sensing system based on MerR-regulated visual pigment biosynthesis.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Versatile artificial mer operons in Escherichia coli towards whole cell biosensing and adsorption of mercury.PloS one · 2021Article
- Detection of Bioavailable Cadmium by Double-Color Fluorescence Based on a Dual-Sensing Bioreporter System.Frontiers in microbiology · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Bacterial biosensors can enable programmable, selective chemical production, but difficulties incorporating metabolic pathways into complex sensor circuits have limited their development and applications. Here we overcome these challenges and present the development of fast-responding, tunable sensor cells that produce different pigmented metabolites based on extracellular concentrations of zinc (a critical micronutrient). We create a library of dual-input synthetic promoters that decouple cell growth from zinc-specific metabolite production, enabling visible cell coloration within 4 h. Using additional transcriptional and metabolic control methods, we shift the response thresholds by an order of magnitude to measure clinically relevant zinc concentrations. The resulting sensor cells report zinc concentrations in individual donor serum samples; we demonstrate that they can provide results in a minimal-equipment fashion, serving as the basis for a field-deployable assay for zinc deficiency. The presented advances are likely generalizable to the creation of other types of sensors and diagnostics.
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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.