Synthetic biology enables field-deployable biosensors for water contaminants

Wastewater surveillance is a powerful tool to understand community profiling in terms of health monitoring. Tracking biomarkers such as inorganic and organic pollutants, drugs, and pathogens in wastewater gives a general idea about the lifestyle and health status of a population as well as pollutant exposure caused by various toxic chemicals. Notably, tracing pathogenic clues could help predict and prevent disease outbreaks such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in communities. To this end, developing portable biosensing platforms will facilitate the on-site monitoring of water contamination without requiring complex equipment. New technological developments in synthetic biology have advanced both synthetic gene circuit-based biosensors and new in vitro detection strategies coupled with easy-to-interpret visualization methods. Here, we summarize the latest advances in synthetic biology tools and discuss how they enable the development of rapid, low-cost, ease-to-use and field-deployable biosensors for monitoring a variety of water contaminants and health-related biomarkers in the environment.(c) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

Wastewater surveillance is an important tool for understanding community health by tracking biomarkers such as pollutants and pathogens in wastewater. Advances in synthetic biology have facilitated the development of portable biosensing platforms for rapid and low-cost monitoring of water contaminants and health-related biomarkers.