Abstract
Synthetic biology reengineers cell programs and employees mathematical methods for the purposes of the medical treatment, green energy and environment remediation etc.. In this study, an amplifier-based biosensor is designed for enhancing the metal ion detection performance. The proposed amplifier utilizes the difference of cell membrane permeability and promoter abilities between metal ion-induced system and bacteria quorum sensing system to achieve the amplifying function. For the applications of amplifier-based biosensor, we choose two copper-induced systems and one lead-induced system to exploit the better metal ion detection performance of the amplifier-based biosensor system than that of the conventional biosensor system. After constructing the dynamic equations of synthetic genetic circuits, we could predict the cell responses with well-characteristic component libraries and well-identified kinetic parameters. And with the selection of various strengths promoter-RBS components in the amplifier part of amplifier-based biosensor system, we can offer different detection specifications of amplifier-based biosensor system in silicon. Selection of various promoter-RBS components from the corresponding component libraries could provide designer with different detection requirement of metal ion biosensor. Finally, the experimental results verify that the proposed amplifier-based biosensor exactly could enhance the detection ability of metal ions.