Monitoring and measuring metabolic load in Bacillus subtilis

One of the goals in synthetic biology is to produce large scale engineering of biological systems for the improved production of various (novel) metabolites, including biofuels, drugs, renewable chemicals and bio-based material. The introduction of synthetic genetic constructs into a chassis could, however, cause unwanted adverse effects on the host organism, imposing a metabolic burden and reducing the yield of the desired product. Consequently, a method for monitoring the overall affect of these changes is required. We have devised an in vitro monitor that tracks, in real time, changes in the capacity of B. subtilis gene expression, which can be used to assay the burden imposed by synthetic constructs and their parts.