On-Chip Engineered Living Materials as Field-Deployable Biosensing Laboratories for Multiplexed Detection

Abstract

Engineered living materials (ELMs) harness engineered cells to fabricate functional materials with lifelike characteristics, offering unparalleled potential across various fields. Nonetheless, the deployment of ELM-based biosensors beyond laboratory settings remains challenging. Herin, ELMs are explored as field-deployable biosensing laboratories on a microfluidic chip (ELMlab-on-Chip) for the simultaneous detection of diverse analytes in the field. This approach engages a bottom-up strategy that includes the molecular engineering of living biosensors, the construction of stimuli-responsive ELMs, and the fabrication of an integrated biosensing device. Specifically, living biosensors are engineered with fine-tuned sensitivity and response by designing chimeric receptors and precisely controlling receptor concentration. Integrating ionic and covalent cross-linking strategies in manufacturing ELMs ensures good substance permeability and mechanical robustness. Moreover, a microfluidic chip is devised tailored for the orthogonally stimuli-responsive ELMs, creating a spatially encoded sensor array with the output detected by a miniaturized smartphone-based detection device. The integrated ELMlab-on-Chip platform has demonstrated its potential in the simultaneous analysis of multiple chemicals from a single environmental sample under field conditions, offering an effective strategy to expedite the real-world application of living materials.