Neglected Tropical Diseases

Kirill Alexandrov of the University of Queensland in Australia will develop a low-cost diagnostic that uses well-established glucose biosensors to detect DNA of infectious pathogens. The biosensor will be built by splitting the enzyme glucose dehydrogenase in half, and attaching each half to a protein that is engineered by zinc-finger nuclease technology to bind a specific sequence of DNA in a pathogen. In the presence of that pathogen, the enzyme becomes whole and reacts with glucose to produce an electric current that can be read by portable electronic devices including smartphones.