Team:Tuebingen/Description
Project Description
A Biosensor Memory Module: Cre Sensor
Analysis and imaging methods are an indispensable element of every scientific study - in a wider sense the results are only as good as their measurement methods.
Photostimulation is one of the most important non-invasive analysis methods allowing researchers to examine the relationship between metabolic processes, e.g. through activating a molecule via light treatment. We want to create a module which makes it possible to take a snapshot of the activity of a sensor at any time.
Our designed system should be capable of capturing such a ‘snapshot’ of the activity of a sensor. Therefore our aim is to create a Cre recombinase whose activity can be reversibly controlled by light. By activating this construct only for a short period of time, we can use a Cre to switch on expression of Luciferase in only a limited amount of the sensor cells. Through coupling the Cre expression to the sensor we can thereby permanently write the sensor state of a given time point into the DNA of a system.