SBIR/STTR Phase I: DNA binding proteins as biosensors

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will develop a new general platform for preparing biosensors for a large number of target molecules. The target molecules for these biosensors will be the compounds (ligands) which regulate DNA binding activity of sequence-specific DNA binding proteins. A large number of such highly-selective ligand-dependent DNA binding proteins has evolved in nature to regulate gene expression. Many of the ligands for these proteins are compounds of interest in environmental, forensic, toxicological and biomedical analysis. This project proposes a general strategy to prepare biosensors that can detect these ligands and that take advantage of the outstanding specificity of DNA binding proteins. The presence of the target molecule will be reported by a change of fluorescence intensity of the sensor. The overall objective of the Phase I project is to provide experimental verification of the biosensor design. The commercial applications of this project are expected to span a number of different markets requiring detection of many target molecules. The new biosensors to be developed in this project will find commercial use as detectors of environmental pollutants, of toxic compounds in food and of regulatory molecules in biological and biomedical research.