Engineering Soil Microbes for Augmented Sensing Capabilities

Plant growth and health is strongly connected to the soil microbial environment. Microbes can be beneficial – mediating processes like nutrient cycling, mineralization, disease resistance, and protection from abiotic stresses – or pathogenic. In either case, the detection of specific microbes and microbial compounds in the soil is important, both as a means to gauge soil activity and to direct interventions as needed. However, the detection of biological species is difficult, and while biochemical assays have been developed for some targets, many compounds cannot be measured without intensive profiling techniques. Thus, we are building genetically-engineered microbial sensors to detect biological targets of interest. While it is difficult to build non-biological systems to sense biological targets, proteins with affinity for specific biological molecules are common in nature. Using genetic engineering tools, we can re-purpose these proteins to trigger a detectable response in a selected microbial chassis. These microbial sensors can potentially be utilized to continually monitor for certain targets or to implement self-contained responsive systems, such as narrow-range pesticide release upon detection of a known pathogen.