Selenium biosensor development

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Selenium is an essential element for all life, but when concentrations exceed nutritional requirements it**becomes toxic. Some industrial activities, such as mining, can accelerate the release of dissolved selenium**compounds into the receiving environment. To remove dissolved selenium from industrial wastewater, reactors**are used to biologically reduce the soluble selenium species into non-soluble forms. In order to manage**selenium release at industrial sites, the concentrations of soluble selenium species in the wastewater and in the**treated water must be measured in an accurate and timely way. Currently this cannot be done on site, as the**method for measuring selenium speciation is highly specialized and can only be carried out by a few**commercial laboratories. In this project, a biotechnology company, FREDsense wants to use their patented**portable, cost-effective device for measuring contaminants of interest in water directly in the field. Their first**product was an arsenic sensor, and they want to employ a similar approach to develop a selenium biosensor.**Their technology is based on a response to genetic elements that are selective and sensitive to the analyte of**interest. Dr. Baldwin has been working with selenate-reducing organisms and her group has collected a vast**amount of metagenomic data on these. The goal of this project is to mine these metagenomic data for potential**genetic elements that can be tested for their selenium selectivity and sensitivity in FREDsense's technology.**Additionally, the selenate reducing bacteria enrichments in Dr. Baldwin's laboratory will be used for functional**screening for selenate and selenite selective genetic elements. The outcome of this work will be identification**of candidate genetic elements with the selectivity and sensitivity for dissolved selenium species, selenate and**selenite.