• DOI:10.1038/s41587-021-00950-3
• Corpus ID: 235673261

Wearable materials with embedded synthetic biology sensors for biomolecule detection.

@article{Nguyen2021WearableMW,
  title={Wearable materials with embedded synthetic biology sensors for biomolecule detection.},
  author={Peter Q. Nguyen and Luis R. Soenksen and Nina M. Donghia and Nicolaas M. Angenent-Mari and Helena de Puig and Ally Huang and Rose A. Lee and Shimyn Slomovic and Tommaso Galbersanini and Geoffrey Lansberry and Hani Sallum and Evan M. Zhao and James B. Niemi and James J. Collins},
  journal={Nature biotechnology},
  year={2021}
}

• P. Q. Nguyen, L. Soenksen, +11 authors J. Collins
• Published 28 June 2021
• Biology
• Nature biotechnology

Integrating synthetic biology into wearables could expand opportunities for noninvasive monitoring of physiological status, disease states and exposure to pathogens or toxins. However, the operation of synthetic circuits generally requires the presence of living, engineered bacteria, which has limited their application in wearables. Here we report lightweight, flexible substrates and textiles functionalized with freeze-dried, cell-free synthetic circuits, including CRISPR-based tools, that detect metabolites, chemicals and pathogen nucleic acid signatures. The wearable devices are activated upon rehydration from aqueous exposure events and report the presence of specific molecular targets by colorimetric changes or via an optical fiber network that detects fluorescent and luminescent outputs. The detection limits for nucleic acids rival current laboratory methods such as quantitative PCR. We demonstrate the development of a face mask with a lyophilized CRISPR sensor for wearable, noninvasive detection of SARS-CoV-2 at room temperature within 90 min, requiring no user intervention other than the press of a button.