Electronic Interfaces for Bacteria-Based Biosensing

In this talk, I will present our work to co-opt the natural detection capabilities of bacteria for hybrid biosensing platforms. We will cover the following techniques: (i) embedding current-producing bacteria inside a conductive polymer matrix to enhance current generation in a microbial electrochemical system; (ii) observing large numbers of chemotactic bacterial flagellar motor behavior to infer environmental conditions; (iii) monitoring the bacterial flagellar motor of individual bacteria using dielectric microbead shaft encoders and electrical impedance measurements. The tools presented here will help to realize rapid, in situ sensing for microbiorobotics platforms.

Speaker: Tom Zajdel, UC berkeley