A Customizable Nanobody-Based Biosensor For Real-Time Cyanotoxin Detection

Climate change is having a profound and concerning effect on aquatic ecosystems, with coastal waters experiencing progressive warming, acidification, and deoxygenation, and the impacts of damaging events such as Harmful Algae Blooms (HABs) are expected to increase over the coming century. HABs have the potential to not only drastically impact public health but also to devastate recreation, tourism, aquaculture, and the overall ecosystem. The development of a sensitive sensor platform for the continuous monitoring of water for cyanotoxins would facilitate the early detection and prediction of HAB events, enabling early action and reducing the costs, environmental damage, and economic damage commonly associated with HABs. We will develop a nanobody-based biosensor strain along with a continuous biosensor platform that will be able to detect and quantify the cyanotoxin microcystin in real time. Importantly, this approach will lead to a pipeline for developing sensors for countless toxins and contaminants, as once we have demonstrated proof of principle with the development of a sensor for microcystin detection, we can swap in a new nanobodies to detect new targets of interest.