Xuefei Nou

Sep 28, 2023 | nature.com | Xuefei Nou |Christopher A. Voigt

AbstractMonitoring environmental DNA can track the presence of organisms, from viruses to animals, but requires continuous sampling of transient sequences from a complex milieu. Here we designed living sentinels using Bacillus subtilis to report the uptake of a DNA sequence after matching it to a preencoded target. Overexpression of ComK increased DNA uptake 3,000-fold, allowing for femtomolar detection in samples dominated by background DNA.