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Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference: GR/L72084/01
Title: ENVIRONMENTAL BIOGENICS USING SENSOR-REGULATED GENES FOR IN SITU ASSESSMENT OF POLLUTANTS IN SOIL
Principal Investigator: Edwards, Professor C
Other Investigators:
Pickup, Professor R Saunders, Professor JR Pickup, Professor P
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
British Gas Westlakes Research
Department: Sch of Biological Sciences
Organisation: University of Liverpool
Scheme: Standard Research (Pre-FEC)
Starts: 01 February 1998 Ends: 31 March 2001 Value (£): 154,254
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:
Assess/Remediate Contamination
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:
Environment
Related Grants:
Panel History:  
Summary on Grant Application Form
Bacterial whole cell sensors of pollutants will be designed that exploit molecular switches called promoters, which activate specific cellular activities in response to an extracellular stimulus. Different promoters will be genetically-linked to a novel gene, the product of which will act as a reporter of promoter activation. Therefore the presence of an external stimulus, which in this programme will be mainly aromatic pollutants, can be detected by the reporter gene. This gene (din) encodes for DNA invertase which inverts defined segments of DNA permanently resulting in a region of changed sequence. This change will be detected by the polymerase chain reaction and a PCR-based assay of din expression optimised. These bacteria will function as whole cell biosensors and once a reproducible assay has been developed they will be used to audit pollution in environment samples. It is hoped to produce novel cell biosensors for environmental monitoring and detection of chemical pollutants.
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Organisation Website: http://www.liv.ac.uk