The Cambridge 2009 iGEM team has created two kits of parts that will facilitate the design and construction of biosensors.
Previous iGEM teams have focused on genetically engineering bacterial biosensors by enabling bacteria to respond to novel inputs, especially biologically significant compounds. There is an unmistakable need to also develop devices that can 1) manipulate input by changing the behaviour of the response of the input-sensitive promoter, and that can 2) report a response using clear, user-friendly outputs. The most popular output is the expression of a fluorescent protein, detectable using fluorescence microscopy. But, what if we could simply see the output with our own eyes?
They have produced a set of transcriptional systems for calibrated output - Sensitivity Tuners. They have also successfully expressed a spectrum of pigments in E. coli, designing a set of Colour Generators. See more at: http://2009.igem.org/Team:Cambridge