Connecting biochemistry and elelctronics with artifical allosteric protein biosensors

The idea that biological systems can be built from standard components is the central tenet of Synthetic Biology. Although proteins control most of real time information and energy flow in a cell, our ability to create protein-based switches and thereon based circuits is woefully underdeveloped. We addressed this by developing a generally applicable strategy for converting constitutively active enzymes into allosterically controlled switches. This was achieved by constructing chimeric enzymes where the enzymatically active part is fused with a conformational switch. We demonstrated that such basic signaling units could be compiled into higher order biosensor systems capable of detecting potentially any analyte. Specifically using this approach we constructed electrochemical and optical biosensors specific to ions, small molecule drugs and proteins.