Oral Presentation The 43rd Lorne Conference on Protein Structure and Function 2018

Connecting  biochemistry and  electronics with  synthetic protein switches (#29)

Kirill Alexandrov 1
  1. Institute for Molecular Bioscience, BRISBANE, QLD, Australia

The idea of combining man-made and natural systems has fascinated humans for centuries. However, despite the explosion of life science advances, the integration of electronic and biological systems remains woefully underdeveloped. We used a combination of structure-based protein design and directed evolution to create synthetic allosteric protein based switches that can produce high electron current in response to a binding of a peptide ligand. We used these modules to design a generic receptor architecture  that can be adopted to detection of practically any molecule. We show that such receptors can be used for detection of ions, small molecules and proteins. The electric output of these redox biosensors can be measured using screen printed electrodes connected to simple potentiostates that enable their used in Point of care applications. I will discuss the further development of the approach to create bi-directional multichannel communications between the biochemical processes and the electronic devices.