Over the last years a huge amount of biosensors was created to detect the most abundant harmful substances. Most of these are not used as real world applications, because they contain genetically modified organisms and can not be used in the open field. These sensors are designed to detect one substance at a time. Combining them has the potential to generate a modular test strip for a spectrum of substances which would provide a complete pollution profile.

We aimed to provide a general, cell free design for synthesis of biosensors compatible to our modular, extensible test system. This cell free test strip can be used outside the laboratory and opens the way for real world applications. For further details concerning our cell free approaches for biosensor developement, check our biosensor design .

To show this principle we chose to detect heavy metals that are still a major problem all over the world. They are tackled in many former iGEM projects. Those include some well characterized sensors as well as basic ideas. By modifying, improving and/or characterizing these already existing sensors in addition to developing a new one, we proofed the applicability of the general concept of a test strip for many substances in parallel.

In addition to these heavy metal sensors we tackled a local problem. In our area date rape drug intoxications present a huge problem. Therefore we created a sensor to detect common date rape drug ingredients .

While researching this topic we became aware of the dual use issue concerning knowledge with misuse potential, like date rape drug ingredients or synthesis. Because the dual use issue is critical to the whole iGEM community and there are no guidelines yet for biosecurity risk assessment or dual use, we decided to write a report about legal and ethical aspects of the dual use topic and propose improvements for iGEM.

In short: We provided practical approaches to a cell free test strip, optimized already existing heavy metal sensors to work in a modular, extensible, cell free system, added a new heavy metal sensor, developed a sensor for date rape drugs and gave insight into the dual use dilemma.