A biosensor device for contaminants of concern to Navy divers in seawater
Abstract
The goal of this project is to engineer a portable device that utilizes engineered bacteria to detect common contaminants of concern to Navy divers in seawater. Chemical and biological contaminants often pollute the marine environment and are a major threat to the health of divers. Chemical contaminants often arise from Navy shipyards, oil spills, industrial pollution, or natural sources. Biological contaminants derive from raw human sewage or agricultural fecal run-off, or blooms of toxic ocean bacteria or algae. Importantly, standard diving equipment does not protect against these contaminants. Divers can ingest harmful amounts of these contaminants via respirator use, absorb them onto the skin or into the blood via seawater trapped beneath wetsuits, or inhalethem via the air that resides above contaminated water sources. Unfortunately, contaminants often go undetected in dive sites because the current technologies for detecting them are expensive, time-consuming, and require off-site laboratory analyses.Here, we propose to engineer a portable biosensor device that will detect multiple common chemical and biological contaminants of concern in seawater in less than one hour. We will leverage recent synthetic biology advances from the Tabor laboratory to engineer bacteria to sense up to 20 common monoaromatic organic and heavy metal contaminants. For the device, we will re-engineer a recent microfluidic system from the Hasty lab capable of detecting freshwater contaminants to be portable and operate in seawater. The device will automatically analyze seawater contaminant levels using a machine learning method recently developed in the Hasty laboratory. An end-user will utilize an intake system to sample raw seawater, and in ~30 minutes, the device will then report the overall risk of a diver entering the water. We will validate our systemusing contaminated field samples collected from Navy-relevant seawater sites. Finally, we will engineer the device to function for at least 30 days without the need for servicing, which will make it useful for a wide range of Navy applications.It is understood that any developmental items and specially designed parts, components, accessories and attachments fabricated under any Department of Defense award resulting from this proposal are being developed for both civil and military applications.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Jul 27, 2018
- Source ID
- N000141812611
Entities
People
- Jeffrey J Tabor
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- Rice University
- United States Navy