Homogenous high enhancement surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrates by simple hierarchical tuning of gold nanofoams.

Surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is a powerful tool for vibrational spectroscopy, providing orders of magnitude increase in chemical sensitivity compared to spontaneous Raman scattering. Yet it remains a challenge to synthesize robust, uniform SERS substrates quickly and easily. Lithographic approaches to produce substrates can achieve high, uniform sensitivity but are expensive and complex, thus difficult to scale. Facile solution-phase chemical approaches often result in unreliable SERS substrates due to heterogeneous arrangement of "hot spots" throughout the material. Here we demonstrate the synthesis and characterization of a homogeneous gold nanofoam (AuNF) substrate produced by a rapid, one-pot, four-ingredient synthetic approach. AuNFs are rapidly nucleated with macroscale porosity and then chemically roughened to produce nanoscale features that confer homogeneous and high signal enhancement (~109) across large areas, a comparable performance to lithographically produced substrates.

Cellulose Fibers Enable Near-Zero-Cost Electrical Sensing of Water-Soluble Gases.

We report an entirely new class of printed electrical gas sensors that are produced at near "zero cost". This technology exploits the intrinsic hygroscopic properties of cellulose fibers within paper; although it feels and looks dry, paper contains substantial amount of moisture, adsorbed from the environment, enabling the use of wet chemical methods for sensing without manually adding water to the substrate. The sensors exhibit high sensitivity to water-soluble gases (e.g., lower limit of detection for NH3 < 200 parts-per-billion) with a fast and reversible response. The sensors show comparable or better performance (especially at high relative humidity) than most commercial ammonia sensors at a fraction of their price (<$0.02 per sensor). We demonstrate that the sensors proposed can be integrated into food packaging to monitor freshness (to reduce food waste and plastic pollution) or implemented into near-field-communication tags to function as wireless, battery-less gas sensors that can be interrogated with smartphones.

Reconfigurable Analog Signal Processing by Living Cells.

Living cells are known for their capacity for versatile signal processing, particularly the ability to respond differently to the same stimuli using biochemical networks that integrate environmental signals and reconfigure their dynamic responses. However, the complexity of natural biological networks confounds the discovery of fundamental mechanisms behind versatile signaling. Here, we study one specific aspect of reconfigurable signal processing in which a minimal biological network integrates two signals, using one to reconfigure the network's transfer function with respect to the other, producing an emergent switch between induction and repression. In contrast to known mechanisms, the new mechanism reconfigures transfer functions through genetic networks without extensive protein-protein interactions. These results provide a novel explanation for the versatility of genetic programs, and suggest a new mechanism of signal integration that may govern flexibility and plasticity of gene expression.

CRISPR-Cas Expands Dynamic Range of Gene Expression From T7RNAP Promoters.

Reducing leaky gene expression is critical for improving protein yield of recombinant bacteria and stability of engineered cellular circuits in synthetic biology. Leaky gene expression occurs when a genetic promoter is not fully repressed, leading to unintended protein synthesis in the absence of stimuli. Existing work have devised specific molecular strategies for reducing leaky gene expression of each promoter. In contrast, we describe a repurposed, modular CRISPRi system that attenuates leaky gene expression using a series of single-guide RNAs targeting the PT7/LacO1 promoter. Furthermore, we demonstrate the efficacy of CRISPRi to significantly increase the dynamic range of T7 RNA Polymerase (T7RNAP) promoters. In addition, we demonstrate that the CRISPRi system can be applied to enhance growth of bacteria that suffer from leaky expression of a toxic protein. Our work establishes a new application of CRISPRi in genomic engineering to improve the control of recombinant gene expression. The approach is potentially generalizable to other gene expression system by changing the single-guide RNAs.