The new system builds off work that Lucks and his team published in Nature Biotechnology in July 2020. In that work, the team introduced ROSALIND (named after famed chemist Rosalind Franklin and short for "RNA output sensors activated by ligand induction"), which could sense 17 different contaminants in a single drop of water. When the test detected a contaminant exceeding the U.S Environmental Protection Agency's standards, it either glowed green or not to give a simple, easy-to-read positive or negative result.
To develop ROSALIND, Lucks and his team employed cell-free synthetic biology. With synthetic biology, researchers take molecular machinery -- including DNA, RNA and proteins -- out of cells, and then reprogram that machinery to perform new tasks. At the time, Lucks likened ROSALIND's inner workings to "molecular taste buds."
"We found out how bacteria naturally taste things in their water," he said. "They do so with little molecular-level 'taste buds.' Cell-free synthetic biology allows us to take those little molecular taste buds out and put them into a test tube. We can then 're-wire' them to produce a visual signal. It glows to let the user quickly and easily see if there's a contaminant in the water."
